Animalistic Tendencies
by Bloodstained Comma
Summary: Prequel to King's Note, though unnecessary to read both to understand the plots. Sean seeks revenge on Al by use of a death note, who he believes murdered his mother, though Al is innocent. M for profanity and violence. Mostly OC, with L in later CHPs.
1. Prologue: Ten Years

_Oh, what's this now? A prequel to **The King's Note**? Huh -- who'da thunk it, yeah?_

_Anyone who looks at my profile would've...  
_

_Anyway, I rated this M for a reason. First off, the main characters are Al, Pat, Don, and Katherine. Yeah. Profanity. And lots of it.  
Also, there will be LOTS of violence. Blood, gore, violence, the works. You know it. Because I'm deranged like that.  
But seriously, since the story is based around murder, yeah. And not Kira-heart-attack murder. I'm talking fucked up shiz. You've been warned -- don't read it if you can't deal with it._

_What is the purpose of this story? Well, originally, it was to establish a number of things about my **King's Note** OC's. For instance:  
What caused Pat to want to learn so much about breaking into and out of shit?  
How did Katherine decide on her name if she never had one to begin with?  
How did Al, Don, Pat, and Katherine all actually meet?  
Who the fuck is Al, and how is he important if Comma killed him off in the beginning of the original story?  
Why was Al wanted for murder in the first place?  
Where did Don first meet Jose Cuervo?  
How did Pat develop his skills at spotting whiskey from a mile off?  
How did Katherine end up smart enough to border on L-like?  
Did Don have a younger brother that I never mentioned in King's Note because he was a raving lunatic that Don didn't claim anymore?  
Was Pat seriously a tech nerd when he was in his early teens or am I just shittin' ya?  
What actually got my OC criminals involved in the Kira case in the first place?_

_Now, though, I have managed to inflect Death Note like aspects into it, and it has become its own fanfiction with the same characters._

_It's sort of a prequel, but not really - the storylines are completely different._

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Death Note. Wish I did. I'd be a fecking millionaire. That'd be feckin' grand.  
_

_Well, I've been researching a bunch of rather colorful Irish slang lately to use in the story. I don't think I used much of it in this chapter, but if I did and anyone doesn't recognize a word, just let me know in your review and I shall translate for you._

_This first chapter is PURELY original characters - it explains how everyone met, basically. It's more of a prologue than anything, as I'll be getting into the actual storyline in the next chapter. But, as I really wanted to write this in the first place to clarify some things about the OCs in **King's Note**, this chapter was necessary for me._

_**As an initial warning: The actual Death Note aspects of the story don't begin until chapter 4. It is a fanfiction -- the first three chapters are entirely original, and the fourth inducts it into the world of fanfiction. **  
_

* * *

Though it was a rather beautiful autumn day, it still wasn't a particularly pleasant one, not for Mark Alfred Mitchell. Ten years old and alone in the slums wasn't pleasant for anyone at all. It was this or the local orphanage, however, and he would rather live alone, begging passing strangers for spare change, than be subjected to that sort of torture. He had seen the caretaker of the place, a mean-looking woman with eyes like a hawk's and a stern, hard face. She wasn't the sort of person he wanted to answer to, or would have answered to, for that matter. He felt better off alone, nicking food from unsuspecting store owners and putting on a pitiful act in front of anyone with a kind face to get a bit of cash when he needed it. He had the look of a poor, innocent little boy forced to live life in the streets, and it could generally get him what he wanted. He had no desire or need to live in an orphanage.

When Al had fled from his so-called home, when he had first seen that orphanage, the idea of it had been a tempting one. That had been eight months ago, when he had become stuck in the cold air of early February, longing for the warmth of indoors but not willing to go back to his foster parents to receive it. His first few weeks had been spent wondering if he would even live to see the age of ten, and the thought was still in his subconscious for months after, until September rolled around. His birthday had passed by him without so much as a wave hello – he had spent a week being ten years old without even knowing it until he asked an old woman he had managed to charm a bit of cash out of what the date was. Mentioning then that he had bee ten for eight days without knowing it had caused a tear to fall down the frail woman's wrinkled cheekbone, and had also gotten Al another ten pounds to "buy himself a birthday present." He had gotten the hint there; he played the _I-didn't-even-know-it-was-my-birthday_ card for most of the day after that and had come out about a hundred pounds richer.

If eight months on the streets had taught him anything, it was that people had a tendency to pity homeless children more than homeless adults. It had also taught him to stay out of back alleys, but that was besides the point.

Al gazed across the street from the sidewalk he had taken a seat upon a few minutes ago. It wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world, living out here, but it was really a choice. However, he had made it for the past eight months, and he had done just fine so far. Whenever he found himself glaring enviously at children gripping their parents' hands as they happily skipped their way down the road, he simply reminded himself that he could have easily been in a much worse predicament. His foster parents had been absolute _hell_, he thought with a grimace. This was better than _that_. He couldn't have stood them for any longer. His foster father had been a drunken maniac, and his foster mother, as kind a woman as she was, was too timid for her own good. She refused to stand up to the man, and so he generally beat her half to death at least twice a week and would round on Al from time to time. He couldn't stand it, watching her cower in the corner while he screamed at her and kicked her like a dog, hiding behind locked doors himself to avoid the man as often as possible. Five years of that had been more than enough for him. He had a better chance of surviving alone on the streets than he would have if he had stayed there.

He had enough of an education to know what was what, though it hadn't been a particularly good one, frankly. He had simply managed to befriend children with good families who went to school and learned what he could from them. He could read and write fine, and he knew what was considered basic math for his age. History was idiotic anyway, in his opinion; what use did he have in knowing about the past when he was busy trying to fend for himself as he was now? He had never liked history when he was in school anyway. Science had always seemed fairly useless to him as well – if early civilization had survived without it, then he could, too. He knew how to read signs, he knew how to talk, and he could count money. That was more than enough for him. If he ever needed to know anything else, he would simply grab a few schoolbooks from one of his better-off friends and look through them.

He gave a sigh as he gazed around disinterestedly. He would have never guessed that this sort of life could get dull. It didn't seem like it was supposed to be – just the thought of living on the streets brought on an excited, fearful rush of adrenaline for onlookers who lived in houses and flats and had decent lives and good families, even if they didn't wish to admit it. Anyone with a sense of adventure felt it. After a few weeks of actually living out there, however, the adrenaline would begin to wear off. After survival was confirmed, things toned down. Decisions linked to adrenaline that seemed as though they might have meant life or death earlier on could be solved through logical thinking now, through a thing known commonly as "street smarts." After those first couple of weeks, possibly the first few months, the adrenaline rush mostly went away.

Even so, little surprises were still beheld every so often.

Al watched with raised eyebrows as a woman walked quickly down the sidewalk he was sitting upon and up to the front steps of an apartment building. There she set a bundle of cloths on the doorstep and stuck a small, folded piece of paper inside the cloth. The woman herself had drab, dark red hair that looked like it hadn't been brushed or washed in quite some time. Al scoffed to himself – even living on the streets, _he_ was managing to keep decent hygiene. Her clothes were practically rags hanging off of her: a tattered, dirty white shirt, a grayish skirt that could have been denim or might not have been, and a pair of old tennis shoes. She was tall and skinny, far too skinny to be healthy. Beneath the eyes set into her gaunt face, he saw as she walked away from the apartment, were heavy bags, so dark that they could have been mistaken for smudged mascara. Al looked away and rolled his eyes. She was a drug addict, no doubt. There were more than enough of them around this area of the town. It wasn't a huge surprise.

He looked back up when a shadow passed behind him and he looked to his left to see the woman walking away from that apartment complex swiftly, her head held low, matted hair screening her face from the view of any possible onlookers. He watched as she turned a corner and hurried out of sight, though she turned her head and made eye contact with him for a split second before – her eyes were red, but she looked perfectly sober. She was crying….

But then – _then_ he heard it, issuing from that same apartment building, from just outside it… on its doorstep? He could hear the sound of a crying baby.

Al looked over his shoulder to see that the bundle of blankets was now moving. Curiosity piqued quickly enough, and before he had a say in the manner, his legs had stood him up and begun to move him towards the source of the racket. He stopped just before the top step that led up to the front door of the apartment building, where the bundle lay. Sure enough, poking out through the top was a small, rather frustrated face of an infant, and a _very_ young one from the looks of it. Between the baby and the cloth was a folded piece of paper. Al bent down and retrieved it, then sat down on the stairs as he unfolded it to read the words scrawled upon the tearstained paper.

_Arthur, you rat bastard,_

_I thought you might want this back. You gave it to me in _

_the first place and left, after all, you feckless piece of shit. _

_She was born yesterday. I can't take care of her, and I _

_don't give a damn anyway. I'll let you name her, I don't _

_care what it is, and I'll kill you if you come looking for me_

_to give the damn thing back, it's not like I wanted it in _

_the first place._

_Have a nice life, fuckface._

_Abigail_

Al refolded the letter, breathing out a heavy sigh of air, and set it down by the bundle. He looked down at the baby. To have been born yesterday, she was quite alert – as he read, she had stopped crying and begun looking up at him with wide, curious turquoise eyes. He looked back down at her, turning slightly to the side.

"Wha' d'ye think yer lookin' at, aye?" That curious look was his only response. With a sigh, he tucked the letter back into her wrap. "Sorry, lass, but it's not my job to be takin' care yeh."

She watched him again as he stood, and he turned away to walk off. After a few steps away from the stairs, the crying started again. Al flinched and turned around to look back at the bundle from where he stood. It truly wasn't any of his business, and he was only _ten_ – that was hardly an age suited to care for a baby, much less a newborn one. But as he took a step back, his stomach turned miserably. He gave a groan, rolling his eyes skyward – morals had to be the most hateful of all human personality traits. She would have a better chance of surviving if he did something than she would if she was left here in nothing but a few blankets on a doorstep in slums like these. But what could he _do_?

His feet seemed entirely apathetic about what he could do, as they were gladly carrying him back over to the baby anyway. When she took sight of him, she stopped crying again. Now she was reduced pitifully to pouting and a few pitiful sobs. Al looked down at her, then up at the sky. "This is bloody great…" he mumbled under his breath, before reaching down and lifting her up. "Bloody pest, yeh are, yeh know that?" he said with a sig. "What'm I supposed to do with yeh?" As though to answer him, the sounds of yelling children suddenly erupted from a few streets over. The sound was faint, but just loud enough for him to hear it. He looked up at the apartment building, though what he saw was far beyond. "No, I can' do that… I mean, surely yeh'd stand a be'er chance there'n yeh would here, but…." He sighed and looked down. "Wha d'yeh think?" He received a few blinks in response, and another hiccup. "I haven't got any other ideas. How about if I promise ter visit yeh every day? That should do, yeah?" She only stared blinkingly up at him now. "I guess tha' could be a yes…. All righ' then tha's good. Wouldn't want ter leave yeh here, I know what goes on 'round this place. Not a good place at all for little lasses like yerself. Not to say that helljole is good for yeh, but it's better'n this, eh?" He paused and shook his had, taking a step off the stairs. "What am I talkin' to yeh for? Jaysus, I'm goin' mad…" He shook his head once more and continued away from the apartment complex.

* * *

It had been nearly ten years since that day, but he still found himself pondering over it as he looked down at his reflection in a pint glass. He had changed a lot in that time. Al was nineteen years old now, soon to be twenty. His preferred identity was Alvin McManerberry – Alvin for his preferred name, as Alfred just sounded a bit too dorky; and McManerberry from the name of a town he had heard in an animated comedy series about an uptight Texan, as it sounded Irish enough and it had a nice ring to it. Perhaps the only thing that had changed about him physically was his height and his age. He was still a redhead, still had an annoying smattering of freckles over his face, and still hated it. The childish innocence was gone from his face without a trace, had been fading since he hit the age of twelve or thirteen, probably, but it had been replaced with a deceivingly trustworthy smile and pair of gray-green eyes.

Perhaps his physique had changed from the gangly preteen he had once been as well. He had grown into his height after a while, and had added a bit of muscle upon getting a job bartending at Mac's Tavern – if he ever needed to throw any unruly customers, then he had to be fit enough to fight them, so it was only practical. He hadn't lost a single fight since he had started working there almost two years ago. The owner of the pub, Mr. McKinley – old Mac himself – was quite proud of the work Al had done and generally left him in charge of the pub any time he needed to leave town.

Now that he was of age, he also had a flat down the road from the pub, one he had gotten just before the job. He didn't particularly need a job; it was more a hobby than anything. He couldn't get away with begging quite as much anymore since he was old enough now to be out on his own, but a combination of good acting skills, a smile that almost anyone would trust without question, and a good dosage of street smarts had done him quite well over the years. He was good enough at making fake IDs now, and had started drinking himself when he was around fifteen, though he had started his "career," as he liked to call it, as a con artist earlier than that. He was well known by quite a few big time crooks at this point, and he had plenty of friends also in the business. His job at this pub was ideal for him, as he could spot a fake ID from a mile off and the owner could hardly tell a picture pasted on a piece of cardboard with a bit of writing on it from the real thing. He could also smoke on the job and fleece a pint or two when Mac wasn't around, and he got discounts there when he wasn't working. He only worked there because he enjoyed it, and it only further improved his people skills. He didn't need the money, not at all; he had enough credit card scams running to make Bill Gates look poverty-stricken.

He was at the heyday of his career as a con artist, high up enough that he got calls from top of the line business owners and executives, detectives and even police officers, looking for him to work for them in bringing others down or finding out things. When he did accept jobs, it wasn't out of a need for the money offered to him as a prize, but was more out of how fun the job sounded. He did occasionally need the cash, and in that case, he would just pick the most interesting job offered to him over the course of a few days to a few weeks, depending on just how badly he needed money. Usually, though, credit cards could get him by without a problem.

"Oi, 'ow about yeh quit drinkin' on the job and get us a pint?"

Al looked up with raised eyebrows from his glass of rum and coke, half inquisitively and half in surprise – he was normally fairly alert when customers sat at the bar, particularly directly in front of him. He had zoned a little, something he would have to avoid doing again. The inquisition in the look, however, was aimed at the most likely underage teenager who had just set a five pound note on the bar. He saw this sort of thing often enough, and didn't generally bother attempting to be intimidating unless the kid in question decided to be an idiot.

"''Ow about yeh show me some ID an' I'll think aboot it?" He kept his tone amiable enough, and the boy produced a wallet from his pocket a moment later, pulled what appeared to be a driver's license from it, and laid it upon the counter on top of the money. Al flipped it around to look at it. "Huh. I'll be damned." He put his hand down on the ID to hold it in place when the boy, who was "Darrell Marcus" according to the ID and had been eighteen for about eight months. "This is far better an attempt than most come in with." He slid the money and the ID back across the counter to the boy and smiled at the surprised look he received in response to the action. "Not that I couldn't make anything just as good or better, meself. It might've actually fooled me if I'd been 'avin' an off day, but I'm not very easy to fool. It could probably get yeh anythin' at another other pub around here." He looked over at the other two that had apparently walked in with the brunette. Both looked younger; the older of the two had straight black hair about to his shoulders and favored the one with the fake ID; probably brothers. The third had lighter brown hair and was younger yet. Al would have placed them him at about twelve, the back haired one at fourteen or fifteen, and the older of the three at fifteen or sixteen at the most. "I'm guessing no one else wants to give it a try now?"

"Damn…" the first one said, taking the money and ID and putting it back in his wallet. He looked back up after, grinning – he was going to take another shot at it, almost definitely. "Well, yeh seem agreeable enough, aye? 'Ow about yeh jus' _pretend_ it fooled yeh? Yeh'll jus' be losing business to McCaffery's 'cross the street otherwise. Would yer boss think it was a fake?"

"I doubt it. Tha's par' of why 'e hired me." He looked disappointed again. "But," Al continued slowly, "as yeh said, business is business." He looked back up hopefully. "Ah, why not. Yeh made a good effort. I'll even give yeh one on the 'ouse fer the quality of the ID, been a while since I've seen one that could've fooled me."

The boy ended up admitting he was a sixteen year old that went by the name of Don. He and his brother Sean – who was indeed the one with the black hair – had left home a couple years ago. The other boy was Pat, who lived with his strict grandmother and was basically hanging around with the brothers for the excitement of life on the streets without actually having to live on the streets. Don had been working endlessly at perfecting making fake IDs for the past couple of years, and this had been the first place he had tried it.

"Bad luck there," Al said with a laugh, lighting up a cigarette after listening to the story. "Yeh could fool most police with tha', no doubt."

"Then 'ow the hell did _you_ manage to pick it out?"

"I told yeh already, it's no better than anythin' I could make meself," he said, grabbing an ashtray from under his side of the bar. "But I've 'ad almost ten years at it, so no worries, yeh'll get be'er at it."

"Ten years?" Pat inquired. "When did yeh start, then?"

"Well, frankly, it's more along the lines of nearly seven years, as I didn't have to start worryin' aboot that until I was thirteen. From ten until nearly fourteen, I jus' got by on beggin' an' actin' helpless. Then I had to start aging, pain in the arse, ter be completely honest, but I'd 'ad a few years to work up enough common sense to come up with some new ideas, an' tha' was about when I started lookin' into fake identities an' credit card scams, all tha', yeh know."

"Hey…" Don said speculatively, "yer name's not Alvin McManerberry, by any chance?"

"Heavens, no," Al said. "I'd never release me real name to the public, that's jus' my preferred alias."

"Oh, fecking _brilliant_," Don said with a laugh. "I walk into a random pub to test me craftsmanship in fake identification out and the barkeep jus' _happens_ ter be the most bloody renowned con artist in the country."

"It's jus' like I said, mate; bad luck there."

* * *

_As I said, entirely OC._

_I'll be getting into the storyline in the next chapter. It'll be entirely OC for a few chapters still, not counting the shinigami, but L will be in the story, and he will be important.  
_


	2. Ice and Venom

_Woo, I actually got a review for the first chapter!_

_Sybil Corvax: Thanks - glad someone liked it :P_

_And onto the chapter._

_We're getting into the storyline now. No Death Note elements quite yet, but I'm suspecting they'll be at around chapter 4 or 5ish._

_But, the action's picking up in this chapter, at least._

_Oh, and in this chapter, as an added bonus, is Don't first experience with a lovely beverage called tequila._

* * *

An inquiry of, "What the fuck d'yeh mean, 'yeh've never had tequila'?" and one free shot of Jose Cuervo was all that it apparently took to create a monster within the walls of Mac's Tavern on a particularly crowded Friday night. If he had been given any hint as to what the explosive result of this lethal combination of actions was, he might have never said anything. Of course, Mac was out of town, which meant that even working the bar, Al wasn't entirely sober himself. For that reason, he might have still done both things if he had known the result in advance, if only for the amusement factor. Al shook his head in dismay as he poured Don's third paid-for shot, then continued onto the next four. If Don didn't get back on his barstool soon, then it would be one hell of a waste. "The only thing we can hope is that 'e doesn' end up gettin' the worm," he said to Pat and Sean.

"Why?" Pat asked curiously.

"Oh, there's no telling what might 'appen then," Sean said with a laugh. "We could find 'im jail tomorrow morning in a cocktail dress 'er something."

It had been a little over a year since the three had first entered the pub with fake IDs of a mindset to fool whatever bartender was there into believing they were real. Unfortunately, they had encountered Al in the first one they entered, meaning no fool would be made. Fortunately, though, Al understood their effort, having done the same exact thing when he was fifteen and gotten away with it right across the street. The three were aspiring to become crooks themselves, and Al had unintentionally become something of a role model for them when he related his own story to how his career had started to them.

Pat shrugged. "I've only 'ad whiskey an' beer, I don't know."

"Aye, hang on a minute, there, how have yeh even had them?" Al asked suspiciously, raising an eyebrow. "I've not let yeh drink in here before, are yeh goin' somewhere else in yer spare time?"

"Yeah, home," Pat said defensively. "Me gran has a bad habit o' forgettin' to lock her liquor cabinet. It's gotten me grounded a good few times, but I can break oot easily enough. I'm _supposed_ to be home now, an' she thinks I am, prob'ly. If not, she'll jus' change the locks on me doors an' windows again. No big deal, I'll just figure them out an' be done with it."

Al laughed. "She's trainin' yeh to be a fuckin' burglar and she doesn' even realize it, that's brilliant. I'm bloody horrible with locks. If I can't talk me way into somewhere I'll just give up and go somewhere else."

"Oi, where's me shot at? I paid for a' leas' five more!" A hiccup followed this, and the three looked over to see Don getting back on his barstool. He swayed slightly, but managed to keep his balance. "Tequila, please?"

"Not that yeh need anymore," Al said, indicating the glasses sitting directly in front of Don. "Yeh've already hit the floor twice. Mos' people stop after the firs' time they do tha', yeh know."

"Aye, fuck off, if I'd stopped after tha' I'd've not been payin' for more, yeh're encouragin' yer own bloody pub to go bankrupt," he said, pointing at Al accusingly, though he missed by about three feet and ended up pointing to a display of whiskey bottles behind the counter. "I'm no' entirely sure which one of yeh's encouragin' it, but Ah'd place me bets on all four."

Al crossed his arms as Don downed the first shot. He nearly lost his balance again. "I'm not givin' yeh any more after these, assumin' yer even still conscious by the time yeh finish. Yer already feckin' steamboats, I don't want to end up havin' ter close the pub down to drag yeh off to the hospital with alcohol poisonin'." His next shot did cause him to lose his balance, but he managed to catch himself on one of his elbows before falling over entirely. Al looked over the bar at him, then picked up one of the shot glasses.

"He's goin' to end up jumpin' yeh," Sean said with a laugh as he stood Don's barstool back up.

"Aah, ten quid says he won' even notice," Al said. "An' even if 'e does, it's not like 'e'd do any damage, aye? Besides, I don' think 'e could handle the rest of 'em on his own."

"I guess –"

He was interrupted by a clattering sound down towards the other end of the bar. All of them looked over, even Don as he got back onto his stool. The sound had been of breaking glass and the surprised yelp of the other bartender working that night. "Ah'll leave whene'er the hell Ah damn well feel like it, yeah? Yeh stupid bitch, feck off an' get me another pint, would yeh?"

Don and Pat both sniggered at the slurred, drunken yell, knowing what was probably coming. Al kept alert for any sign that he was going to have to toss someone out – it was something he hadn't had the chance to do in a while, so it sounded like a fun idea. Sean was quiet for another reason entirely. He looked at his brother, who was still grinning like an idiot, too wrecked to recognize the voice, if he even would have. The voice, even slurred as it was, was at least slightly recognizable. From where, he wasn't sure, but it was.

"Sir, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm not goin' to serve yeh anythin' else, yeh've 'ad more'n enough," Amy said cautiously from the other end of the bar. "Yeh prob'ly won't even find yer way home tonight as pished as yeh are now."

"Oh, yeh think so? Well, yeh seem a nice young lass, 'ow about yeh let me camp out a' yer place?"

"Look, I don't want ter 'ave to call the law on yeh, ya feckin gobshite, but I'll be glad ta if yeh keep it up."

"Oh, now Ah'm _real_ shcared. Call 'em, then, why don' yeh?"

"All right, all right, I won't be callin' 'em down here – that'd ruin everyone else's fun. Yer still not stayin', though. Oi, Al! Li'le help'd be nice!"

Sean tried to catch sight of the man as Al dragged him off only a few minutes later. He was sure he knew that voice…. He wasn't sure why he was even curious, but there was something that made him wonder, than made him want to follow. He looked at Don, who was watching with amusement as the drunken man was, quite literally, thrown out of the pub. "I'll be back in a minute."

"Aye? Sure, wha'ever," he said absently. Sean quickly darted through the crowd, avoiding Al as he made his way back behind the bar. He was out the door in enough time to see the man turn the corner, and he followed quickly, but at enough of a distance so he wouldn't be spotted.

Al had just stepped back behind the bar and picked up another of Don's shot glasses. "Where'd yer brother head off to?"

Don shrugged. "'E said 'e'll be back in a minute. Yer not plannin' on throwin' me oot like that, are yeh?" he added with a laugh.

"I shouldn' unless yeh start throwin' pick-up lines at _me_, I might get a bit worried then. Yer fine fer now, but I'm still not lettin' yeh have any more tequila."

"Aw, c'mon!"

"Trus' me, yeh'll be cursin' me fer lettin' yeh have any to begin with come tomorrow mornin'," Al assured him. "Yeh don' wan' anymore than what yeh've got now."

Closing time wasn't very far from then – Al did manage to get Don to stop devouring the tequila before they had to clear everyone out at around half past midnight. Don attempted to help, but when he turned out to be more of a pain in the ass than anything else, Al sent him back over to the bar and left Pat in charge of keeping an eye on him. Al still had a while left before he had to lock everything up and leave, so he sent the rest of the workers on that night away. With the tavern cleared of all the excitement and hubbub, both Don and Pat were able to help a bit more. Don managed to balance his all out stumbling into more or less just an uneven gait that left him walking into things only from time to time when he wasn't paying attention, and Pat was the most sober of the three of them anyway.

"Three…" Al mused, looking out over the cleaned pub from a barstool he had just claimed. "Huh."

"Wha'?" Don said. Realization struck him quite suddenly. "Oi, did Sean go an' scarper on us? He told _me_ 'e was goin' to be back in a minute."

"He left right after –" Pat began.

He was interrupted before his sentence was even halfway formed, by a loud banging noise. The three looked towards the back end of the pub as the noises continued – one, two, three, on up to six – then it stopped abruptly. That noise, it was familiar, all too familiar a sound for the back alleys of the town, but it was never heard this close to the main roads…. Don gulped inaudibly as sobriety hit him harder than a brick to the skull. He was the first of the three to stand from his barstool and walk to the front doors. He pushed one open and stood in the doorway. The cold air of the earliest hours of morning did nothing to settle the pounding in his head or the nervous, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as it rushed past him into the tavern. He had no real reason to believe that the gunshots had been… but at the same time, there was a gut feeling that something wasn't right, something wasn't right at all. There was something in the air of the dark night that held a sort of menace, a foreboding that something was simply not quite right.

The other door opened beside him and Al looked out and around. "No real reason to panic, tha' happens occasionally 'round here," he said slowly. "Usually some drunken bastard shooting at stray animals or somethin'." Despite the attempted reassurance, the tone of his voice didn't make things seem any less ominous.

There was a sound fast approaching, one of racing footsteps, coming from a side alley. Al looked at Don, whose eyes were fixated upon the opening where the alley spilled out onto the main road. He glanced over his shoulder then – Pat still hadn't moved. He wasn't quite as used to this sort of thing, not quite as accustomed to the idea that things like this happened outside of the news. Despite his penchant for following around Don and Sean for the fun of it, his grandmother did do quite a good job of keeping him from these sorts of happenings – she just hadn't done quite good enough of a job this time.

Al stepped outside the pub as the sprinter neared the main road. He emerged quite suddenly, stumbling, looked at Al, and took off in the other direction.

"Ah, fuck," he said. He looked back inside the pub. "That was that bastard from earlier I 'ad to throw out – I'm goin' after him, there's no tellin' what the bloody eejit could 'ave done back there."

"Then what –"

"Both of yeh stay in there, lock up until I get back. We'll not call the police down 'ere unless we 'ave to. Should be back shortly."

Don watched from the door as Al took off after the man, then shut and locked it as instructed. He wasn't at all nauseous anymore – how could he be when his stomach had just up and left him? A vein was throbbing at an uncomfortably fast rate in his left temple as he took a seat with his back facing the bar. That man… he hadn't recognized him before, but he probably couldn't have told his own brother from a donkey as he had been then. But now, from the glimpse of him Al had caught, he had been familiar. But from where? He shook his head, flipping through memories, searching for anyone with a face that might have matched, anyone at all.

"Was 'e sure that was the one who –"

"It looked like he was carryin' a gun of some kind, revolver I think," Don said, sitting back and crossing his arms to stare up at the ceiling. "If either him or Sean aren' back in more than two minutes I'm goin' to see what's happened. Yeh'll stay here with the doors locked," he added.

"But –"

"Oi, no protestin', yer only thirteen bloody years old and yeh have a home, there's no reason for yeh to be gettin' involved in this sor' of thing," Don snapped. Pat recoiled slightly, but protested anyway.

"But if that was –"

"If it was, then it was, the bloody idiot shouldn't 'ave left alone in the first fuckin' place!" He shook his head, standing up. "Stay here, yeah? Al's gonna need someone to let him back in, so'm I, and yeh might have to call the law as well. Lock the doors back 's soon as I leave."

"Yeh're mad…"

Pat sighed as he followed him to the door. He watched as Don unlocked everything without a single reply and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He shot Pat one more warning look – obviously to say he would literally toss Pat back into the bar if he did leave it at any point – and headed off towards the alley. Pat shut the door and locked it, then headed back over to sit at the bar. If this was something big enough for the police to get involved in, his grandmother would probably have bars installed on his windows. That was hardly what he was most worried about, but worrying about that at least kept his mind off of other things. Don was right – he had a home, he had no reason to get involved. But then again, they were like brothers to him. If anything bad happened while he was sitting alone, locked down like a coward in a closed pub, how could he _not_ partially blame himself? He had to do something, didn't he? But he really couldn't…. He turned around on his barstool and rested his chin on the bar, glaring absently at the faintly glimmering glass bottles lining the back counters and shelves. There had to be _something_ he could do. He really wasn't completely useless, was he?

He spent around five or so minutes away from the pub, withdrawn into a debate into his own mind, so much that the sounds of loud, sharp knocking upon the doors only just managed to summon him back to the reality of the moment. He turned quickly around and hopped off of his barstool to stare at the door in incredulity and surprise – no one was at the windows, but someone _had_ knocked.

"Who's 'ere?" he called at the door.

"S'me, I heard gunshots 'at sounded like they were comin' from 'ere, what's goin' on?"

Pat grimaced, but walked to the door anyway. It was better to not let anyone remain outside with what was – _might_ have been going on. Nothing was certain yet, and hopefully nothing would come of it. It was just a matter of waiting it out and hoping, _praying_ that the idiot had just been shooting at stray cats like Al had said. The tone of voice he'd had definitely hadn't been reassuring, but the thought was definitely a hopeful one.

Pat unlocked the doors and opened them, then quickly shut them and locked them back up. He didn't turn away from them immediately when she spoke.

"I _knew_ it came from 'ere, what's happened? Where're Don and Al and Sean?"

Pat gave a sigh. "Al's goin' to bloody kill me…" he mumbled, walking back over to his barstool.

The red-haired, rather short, rather hyper girl was a couple of years younger than Pat himself was, at eleven years old. She was a virtually nameless orphan from the orphanage only a couple buildings over from the pub where Al worked, and a couple buildings over on the other side of the orphanage was the complex where Al had his own flat. According to him, they had never filled out any paperwork on her and she had picked her name by flipping through pages in a book there and picking out one she liked. He had found her on a doorstep when she was a day old, when he was ten, and looked at her like a daughter – he hadn't refrained from telling Pat, Don, and Sean, when they had met her around a week after meeting him (she generally hung out at the pub after hours and on slower days) that he would gladly disembowel them and then strangle them with their own intestines if they ever hurt her in any way at all.

"Al went after 'ooever it was 'at fired the gun out back to find out what's goin' on – he had kicked him out earlier tonight when he started causin' problems. Don just left a few minutes ago to see if the shots were anythin' to be worried about."

"Wha' about Sean?" Katherine climbed up onto a barstool as well, and was now staring at the door she had just come through.

"He went off sayin' 'e'd be back in a minute just as Al was throwin' that drunken lunatic out. We'd jus' realized he was still gone when the gunshots went off."

She blinked at the door a few times, then looked over at Pat. "Yeh don't think that –"

But at that, the interruption of a pounding on the door was head. "Oi, open up, this bastard's feckin' heavy!" Both of them looked to the door quickly. Pat hurried over to the door and unlocked everything, then opened it. Al stumbled in and over to an empty chair at one of the many round tables scattered across the hardwood floors, carrying a rather large, unconscious man, slumped over his shoulder like a bag. He had a perfectly good reason to be stumbling, Pat thought as Al just barely managed to drop the drunk from earlier down in his choice of chairs, nearly falling over himself. He caught himself on another table with both hands, breathing hard.

"Fat fuckin' bastard…" he grumbled under his breath as he straightened back out. Pat watched, quite alert, in case he might have to jump behind the bar for cover, as Al paused to take a look around. He spotted Katherine, and a mixture of confusion and bewilderment overpowered the previously strained look he had been wearing. "Y– what're yeh –" he stuttered for a moment in disbelief. He paused, looking around wildly. "Wait, where'd Don – ah, fer fuck's _sake_, that stupid son of a _bitch_…."

"Did he say anythin'?" Pat asked, looking at the unconscious man slumped in the chair as the man's head lolled backwards and to the side slightly. Judging by the rather nasty red mark around the side of his head and blood seeping down from a scrape that came from just above his left eye to around behind his left ear, he probably hadn't just fallen asleep. However, he was definitely still alive, as his chest was rising and falling at a steady rate.

"Oh, bastard said quite a lot," Al said, shooting a glare of pure ice at the man. "We've got to call the law down, this isn't something we'd want to clean up on our own. An' you!" he added, looking at Katherine again, who recoiled against the bar. "What're yeh doin' here, it's after one in the bleedin' mornin'!"

"I – I heard gunshots, I jus' wanted to make s-sure –"

Al rolled his eyes skyward. "Ah, I'll deal with yeh later, more important things righ' now – Pat, find some duct tape 'er somethin', we don' want him bein' able ter move when 'e wakes up, trus' me on that. Kat, you call the local police department, number should be written down next to the phone. As soon as they get 'ere, I'm goin' to figure out what sor' of trouble Don's gone an' gotten 'imself into. An' if the police recognize me an' take me in, I'll be expectin' the four of yeh ter come an' break me out, yeah?" he added with a humorless laugh.

"So Sean's all right, then?" Pat asked, already heading behind the bar to rummage around for tape.

"If this bastard was tellin' the truth, 'e is, but we can't be sure we can trust _him_ entirely…" Another venomous glare was shot in the direction of the man. Pat and Katherine looked at each other, wondering the same thing. Katherine was the one to, rather cautiously, ask.

"Do yeh know him or somethin'?"

"Tha's not important, just get the police down here, quickly now. Yeh might tell'em to bring a couple ambulances too, just in case." He bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache pounded around the inside of his skull. "Find anythin' yet?"

"Ah, not yet – ah, 'ere it is. Quite a bit of it, too," Pat said, straightening out and holding up a couple rolls of duct tape. "'Ere, catch."

"Jus' bring it over," Al said, waving a dismissive hand. "I'll prob'ly be needin' help with 'im."

Pat did as instructed, hurrying over with the duct tape. No one in their right mind would question Al when he got like this, and this was the worst Pat had ever seen him. Al secured the man's hands behind the chair by taping them together, definitely tightly enough to cut off the circulation in his wrists. Pat looked back and forth between the two. It was quite easy to determine that whatever the man had done, it had been more than just in-general horrible – Al had quite obviously taken it personally.

* * *

_Opinions, suggestions, ect ect? Need translation of any colorful slang? Lemme know. I'm here to help._

_And to write, of course :)  
_


	3. Runaway

_Meh, no reviews last chapter. Oh well. I expect I'll get a few more when I get a little further along in the story. No worries._

* * *

His brother was nowhere to be seen. If he had run, then he had taken the back roads, as he hadn't emerged onto the main street at any time, not while he had been there before. He was almost glad he hadn't found Sean here, for what he did find. All the liquor in the world wouldn't erase the sight from his mind. Three years, he had spent, he and his brother both, sticking it out through the coldest nights with little more than newspapers to sleep on half the time, sleeping with one eye open in the backstreets lest some ruthless destitute should slit their throats as they slept and steal what little they had. He had to wake up in the middle of the night to fight them off more than once. Something had kept them alive, some higher power, and for what? For the ultimate disappointment in their search?

Don had left home three years ago, taking his brother with him, to escape a home suited for no one but the son of a bitch that had made it one. She had left three years earlier, unable to take the pain anymore, but also unable to take them with her. Having been but fourteen when she had her first child, she hadn't completed school and would hardly have a way to support two children on her own. Don knew that well enough, but he had still been of a mindset when he left to at least find her again. He could support himself, him and Sean, so it wasn't money he was looking for, that was never the reason. She was his _mother_, for God's sake. All he wanted was assurance that she was alive and well, or at least well enough for someone in her situation. And now, this. This was the great prize he had received for the search, a search he would have gladly spent years longer on if necessary. It was at an end now, however. That was certain enough.

The mere sight, accompanied by the overpowering smell of blood mixed with gunpowder, had been enough to change his sobriety into a sickened, painful feeling not much unlike a hangover, and he had quite quickly (and rather unwillingly) ended up losing every bit of tequila he had consumed that night. That was before he saw exactly who the ragged, bloodstained form was, before he had managed to pull himself up by use of a brick wall across from where the body sat and turn around to look at it – at _her_. Everything had taken a moment to sink in, from the mussed blonde hair with unnatural, matting streaks of scarlet throughout it, onto the tattered and torn clothing stained with that same red color. There were bruises and scrapes all over her, all obviously fresh, and a large gash across her stomach. One of her arms was bent at an unusual angle, and one of the heels of her boots was broken. None of this had finished the job, however. What had would have been the six bleeding holes. Three were scattered at random, three aimed right at her heart.

And she had fought – she was still breathing for a few short minutes when he had first caught sight of her, but not enough to matter. Her pulse was almost entirely gone; immediate medical attention wouldn't have done any good except to prolong her suffering. The damage to the woman had been the most obvious thing, it had all hit him quite fast, and quite nauseatingly. He had seen quite a lot on the streets, but never anything this utterly _brutal_. It would have taken a madman to have done this.

What took a few minutes to sink in wasn't _what_ he was seeing, but rather exactly_ who_ he was looking at. His initial shock at the sight of the battered woman hadn't allowed his mind to click instantly. But when it had, it had done quite a bit more than click – it had been an all out explosion, an detonation of understanding and sudden comprehension that had echoed against the inside of his skull as a single sentence repeated over and over, telling him exactly what he was seeing, quite a bit more than he cared to hear. He didn't want to believe it, not after three years of searching, not in the least.

He barely remembered what he had done between the moment of his sudden realization and now, as he sat on the wall across from hers, unable to do anything but stare in something between utter amazement and complete horror. He finally shook his head and dropped his head, pressing his bloody (_When exactly had that happened?_) palms against his forehead to stop the pounding. There was sickness, regret, fear, loneliness, anger, a mess of emotions that he could hardly count, much less think of any sort of way to react to. His breathing was quite labored, as his lungs had forgotten how to breathe for a long moment and he was being quite spontaneously required to teach them again. If he could coax his legs into motion, he would go look for Sean. If he had seen this happen and that maniac had spotted him… but no, thinking like that wasn't going to get him anywhere. Sean had run off out of fear – he was fine, he had to be. Don would find him huddled in the corner of a back alley somewhere, but not hurt, and – god forbid – _not_ dead. He was alive and well, if only a little (or a hell of a lot) shocked, a bit scared.

But Al, he had chased down the bastard that had done this! He wouldn't have had time to chase Sean down and do anything to him between the time they heard the gunshots and saw the man running down the street. Surely Al would have caught him. And there were no more than six gunshots to be heard, and she… she had exactly six bullet wounds. No more gun shots, no more fatalities. That was the best that he could hope for.

Don only half looked up when he heard running footsteps headed for this little alcove in the side alley off of Mac's Tavern. It could have been one of a few things, but he didn't really give a damn which it was. If it was the killer come back to the scene of the crime, Don would gladly smash his head into the wall. If it was the police, he would go with them, no big deal, unless they tried to charge him with it. If it was Al, he already knew what his first question was going to be.

The latter of the ideas was the correct one. He heard the footsteps slow to a halt as they reached the small lot and heavy breathing as though he had ran all the way back here – the idiot probably had, Don thought to himself. With much effort, he managed to pick his head up when he heard the footsteps begin again. They stopped next to him, and Al slid down the wall to sit beside him. Don's eyes wandered back over to his mother again, and they stung like they had been punctured by pins at every possible angle. He shook his head and stared down at his knees.

"Did yeh catch the bastard?" he asked quietly.

"Cops've got 'im now. I'll break in an' kill him meself if he doesn' get a death sentence after this."

"Any idea who 'e was?"

"No," said Al with a sigh, looking at the woman. "Not a fuckin' clue. I ended up smashing 'is head through a shop window when I got him ter tell me what 'e'd done. I doubt _'e_ remembers who he is after tha', honestly," he mused. "I hate ter tell yeh this, mate, but the cops'll be back 'ere in a few minutes, we've got to head elsewhere. We've both got enough on us to get us in quite a spot of trouble, an' they might think somethin' else when they see yeh back here 'alf covered in blood."

"But she's –!" he started indignantly, jerking his head up to look at Al.

"I know," he said quietly. "I know who she is. Now come on, all righ'?" he added, starting to stand up. "We've got'a get out."

"Yeh know who she is," Don repeated under his breath. He reached behind him to grip at a crack between the bricks and the cement gluing them together, and just barely managed to pull himself up. Another feeling now, anger, was surfacing above the others. He turned to face Al, one hand still planted on the brick wall to keep his balance. "Do yeh really?"

"We haven't got much of any time ter discuss it now, come on!" Al said impatiently, looking down the alley. "We'll 'ave to take the other one now and come out 'round the other side of the pub, prob'ly –"

"Yeh couldn't o' told me where she was, least that yeh knew she was alive?"

Al crossed his arms and looked at Don, somewhat pityingly, but still impatient. "Yeh're hardly in a state ter be pickin' fights as yeh are now. If yeh're that keen on it, I'll tell yeh on the way, all righ'?"

Don glared at him a moment, but nodded. He let go of the wall and managed to keep his balance, though barely, and followed Al as he started down an alleyway leading behind Mac's. They kept to a slow enough pace so Don wouldn't trip over his own feet (or thin air, for that matter), but quick enough so they didn't stand a chance of being caught. Don still had to use the wall alongside him to propel himself forward a bit, but he was doing a better job walking than he thought he would have done.

"All righ'," Al said with a sigh. "She use' to be a regular in Mac's fer a while, so I met 'er righ' after I started workin' there. One of the nicest people anyone'd ever care ter meet, but she'd had a rough life an' didn' have a very good reputation 'round town. Ended up droppin' out of school when she was fourteen to take care of a child an' so she didn' have anywhere to go after she left 'er husband, an' she couldn't bring her sons with her because she didn't want to force them to live life out on the streets. She'd talk abou' 'er sons all the time when she came in, but she said she hadn't seen either of 'em in a few years a' that time. Last time I saw her in there was about a year before I met you an' yer brother. She had jus' found out the two of yeh had left home, and made me promise not ter give yeh any idea as to where she was if I ever spoke to yeh. She stopped comin' in after tha' – she was afraid of yeh losin' hope, and she didn' want either of yeh to see what she had to become after she left. She knew 'ow much leavin' yeh with yer father 'ad hurt the both of yeh, and she was afraid of hurtin' yeh any more."

Don shook his head, and resolved not to do so again when it made him feel a bit dizzier. "I knew tha' much. I _knew_ she'd 'ave to live out here an' get by… get by doin' God only knows what. I wasn' worried about tha', I jus' wanted to know if she was _alive_, could yeh not 'ave told me that much?"

"I'm a _bartender_, tha's like being a psychiatrist for lower class society, mate. It's jus' patient confidentiality. She didn't want yeh to know, I wasn' goin' ter go back on me word. I'm regrettin' it now…" he added with a glance back over his shoulder. "Yeh shoulda stayed in the pub like I told yeh to."

Don gave a humorless laugh. "Yeah, prob'ly should'a. Sorry about that. So, slammed 'is head through a shop window?" he asked, grinning. "Manage to get 'im ter wake up afterward to question 'im at all?"

"A bit. Same drunken bastard that I 'ad to toss out earlier, so couldn't get much reasonin' out've 'im."

"Still plastered? Yeh'd think 'e'd've sobered up after murderin' someone…"

"We 'ad ter duct tape 'im to a bloody chair an' it still hardly held him. Lovely _that_ was, Old Mac'll be pissed enough about this without anythin' bein' broken inside the place when 'e gets back. I'll 'ave to contact 'im aboot this as soon as we get back to me flat."

"Could definitely lose 'im a bit o' business when it gets to the papers.

"So… where d'yeh suppose Sean got off to?"

Al shook his head. "Not a clue. We'll 'ave ter look fer him tomorrow. He couldn' get far in that little bit of time." Don didn't like the uncertainty in his tone, but decided it would be better to ignore it. He needed to be optimistic about this. He would find Sean, and as soon as his shock wore off, he'd tell him off for taking off in the middle of the night. Everything would be perfectly fine after that.

He wouldn't realize until, after twenty-four hours straight of searching every corner of the town, that optimism was pointless.

* * *

Hitchhiking…. It wasn't really Sean's preferred method of travel, but he couldn't drive yet, so it was better than nothing. He just needed to get out of that town, get that sickening vision behind him, the bastard who had done it, the gruesome result, _everything_. He wouldn't need much time, just a little. Just enough to get himself together, to ensure that he wouldn't be next. The man had seen him, had seen him at the mouth of the alley just before he ran down it after firing the gun. But he had run, straight past Sean, and Sean had taken off down the other alley without a look back. He had flagged down the first person in a car he saw – some middle-aged man weaving along the road in a drunken manner, driving a Ford truck that was probably older than he was – and had gotten in without question, told the man to drop him at the next town. He had also been more than happy to pull a gun on the man and warn him that he wouldn't live to see the next town if he tried anything stupid. He and his brother had always carried at least one weapon between them – they had figured out after a couple of weeks out of their "home" that it was quite necessary.

He was still pointing the gun at the man, still staring out the window of the old pick-up when he saw it beginning to swerve off the road. He looked over to see that the man was, once again, paying more attention to the gun. Sean rolled his eyes. "Eyes on the road and yeh won't have to worry about this," he said, indicating the gun. "And pick the bloody speed up, wha' are we goin at, fifteen miles per hour? Jesus, drunken fuck…"

"Wh… what are yeh doin' with tha' gun anyway? Aren' yeh a little young ter be carryin' a weapon like tha' around?"

"Mind yer own business, yeh fuckin' pikey," he snapped. The man flinched and continued driving. The speed at which the rundown old truck was travelling increased noticeably now, and Sean couldn't suppress a grin of triumph at this when he took to staring back out the window. The gun wasn't even loaded at the time, so it was a rather amusing distraction from…. He flinched slightly as the vision of that horrible scene came back to him and immediately put his mind back to his current predicament. Showing any sign of fear at all showed weakness, which wasn't something he needed to show in this situation. That could easily get him killed.

"We're jus' at the town limits," the man said after another five minutes or so. "Yeh want me ter drive yeh into town or –"

"Anywhere in the business district, if yeh don't mind."

"Not that I've got a choice…" he grumbled, giving a sidelong glance at the gun again.

"Wha' was that?"

"Nothin', nothin'…"

"Good."

Even so, the man continued grumbling all the way into town, nearly swerving off the road a few times and giving cautious, sidelong glances at the gun wielding teen next to him when he did. It was obvious that he wasn't going to take any risks, and that he had no idea that an empty firearm was being aimed at his head. Even if it was a suspicion in the back of his mind, Sean doubted he would mention it, or act upon it at all. No one would want to take that kind of a risk, unless they had some sort of strange death wish. He did have bullets for the gun, of course. There were times that they might be needed. This wasn't one of them, as the man was both stupid and drunk enough to believe it was loaded without any questions on the subject; he just wanted to return home alive, no doubt.

Sean kept the gun pointed at the man until he got out of the truck and it drove off. He then switched the safety back on, stuck it in his pocket, and pulled his shirt down over it. He looked around at the street, flanked with a few rundown apartment complexes, a few shops, and a few taverns. Was this place _possibly_ even smaller than Newmarket-on-Fergus? He pondered this incredulously – the main street of that town at least looked a little more civilized than this place. He wasn't entirely sure where he was – he would have to ask someone tomorrow at some point to figure it out – as he hadn't been paying attention to what direction he was headed in on his way out of town. There were only a few different towns that this could have been, he just had no idea which it could have been. No problem, he thought to himself, taking a turn down an alley next to the nearest building. He had never been _completely_ on his own before, but he had learned enough to manage. The territory was unfamiliar, but he would learn it quickly enough if he had to stay for very long.

Considering the vision that played upon the back of his eyelids every time he so much as blinked, he had a feeling he was going to be here – or anywhere that wasn't _that_ town – for quite a while.


	4. Trial and Error

_Three more reviews on the last chapter - thanks muchly, my friends :)_

_Sooooooooo this is the chapter that turns it into an actual **Death Note** fanfic instead of just a prequel/sidestory thing to **King's Note**._

_Ryuk makes a cameo because he just can't keep his butt outa my stories._

_And then an really rarely mentioned Shinigami (he is in it, he's the one with the indian headdress and stuff!) whose personality I developed off of the **How To Read Character Guide** is also in this chapter - and will be the primary Shinigami in the story. There may be more cameos from the lovely, apple obsessive Ryuk later, but not for a little while._

_It's a year after the events in the previous two chapters._

_**Quick-sum**: Don's (new) appartment gets broken into for a very interesting reason, and a rather irritated Sean picks up a notebook that has just landed on his head, only to discover that it could be a huge help to him in plotting for revenge on... someone whose name I have not specified. Hah! Guess.  
_

_ThreeBooksInTheFire: Shiny? Okay. As long as it's not sparkly (which is a synonym for homo among me and my friends, long story :P). And yeeaaah, I do seriously need to shorten that summary a bit. I revealed too much about the story in it. Luckily, it doesn't seem many people have bothered with the summary anyway, though, so I'm set for now XD  
Sybil Corvax: Eh, it's not all supposed to be entirely obvious anyway. I'm vague on quite a lot of details for a reason... which unfortunately won't be revealed until the end of the story XP  
HeeHeeHee01: Thiiis would be the chapter that the aspects from **Death Note** start to appear in. Towards the end of the chapter - the last one thousand something words._

_**Disclaimer**: No owns, except the original characters. And I'm not even sure if I own them, because Ryuk seems to think he does and I'm not arguing with anyone who has a death note. And I forgot to mention in previous disclaimers: Any real locations (towns, landmarks, ect) mentioned are indeed real places, but the descriptions of them may not be entirely accurate as I have never been to Ireland in my life though I swear to bob I'm moving there one day. Okay. That shouuld cover it._

_**Warnings**: Oh, goody. More death. Wow, Comma's demented. Oh, and a healthy dosage of inebriation. Bit of swearing as well, perhaps.  
_

* * *

The days that followed the incident had been horribly unpleasant. Al had been forced to take about two weeks of unpaid sick days to keep the police off of his back about the murder. Don had moved into Al's already slightly cramped apartment – it was two bedrooms, though still rather small – but he hadn't spent the past two days anywhere near it. In fact, he had practically gone missing for more than forty-eight hours before returning to the apartment, deeming his attempt to find his brother by combing every square inch of the town useless and time consuming, and had promptly passed out on the couch a few minutes later. He had spent the night after being witness to the crime scene planning his hunt, then the next two days searching – to sleep was to waste time. He had credit cards (granted none of them were his), and there were coffee shops in convenient locations. However, it caught up with him. Truly, he had been avoiding sleep for more than one reason, and the other, most prominent reason had been the dreams he knew he was going to have.

A year had already passed since that night, and it hadn't been an easy year. After his two weeks of sick days, old Mac had been forced to let go of Al as a worker. He was a pleasant old man, though, and still gave him employee discounts. Al didn't bother with finding a new job, but he meticulously avoided the police over the next year, until they had mostly forgotten about him being there at the time of that murder, forgotten that they had every intention of laying partial blame on him. The man responsible was sitting in jail on a ten year sentence – nowhere _near_ enough of a sentence for such a heinous act – and Al still knew next to nothing about the man's identity.

Pat and Katherine still knew very little about exactly what had happened on that night a year ago. They knew there had been a murder, but they didn't know who – Pat seemed to suspect that it was really Sean and they were being kept in the dark about it, but they truly still had no idea where _he_ was. He had a few years training in living on the streets, but not on his own, so there was always a possibility that he hadn't made it, but there was a greater chance that he was off on his own somewhere. He had been carrying a gun that night, according to Don, who still remembered every bit of the night with spectacular detail to each individual event – especially considering how inebriated he had been for a good half of it – and therefore had a decent chance at survival.

"Hell, I'll bet he hitchhiked his way over a few towns," he was saying, waving a dismissive hand. Even a year later, the topic was still brought up between the two of them at random. At this time, they were sitting at Mac's Tavern. Though it had been quite some time since his eighteenth birthday – months, actually – Don's drinking habits suggested he may have still been celebrating being of the legal age to buy alcohol. It wasn't as though it mattered, of course, being that Mac's ID expert was no longer working and couldn't stop him from buying it with a fake. It was just the principle of the thing. "He's prob'ly off at some pub with his fake ID," Don continued. "He's sixteen now, he could pass off if 'e wanted to."

"You didn'," Al reminded him.

"Yeah, we'll jus' 'ave to hope whatever pub 'e walks into doesn' have a crook working behin' the bar, eh?" He attempted to take a drink out of his empty beer bottle, realized it was in fact empty, glared at it for a moment, and set it down. "Pat wen' and got 'imself grounded again. His gram's threatenin' to invest in laser locks nex' time he breaks out."

Al laughed. "Yeah, they've locked Kat in her room at the orphanage 's well, apparently they caught her sneaking out. Not even lettin' her off to get ter lessons."

"Can' they get arrested fer that…?"

"Nope. They've hired a tutor, apparently. They were plannin' on it anyway, the teachers got tired of 'er working ahead all the time. They'll complain aboot anythin' at that place, I swear."

Don laughed, half-distracted as he now tried to get the bartender's attention and failed. "If that arse doesn't get over here…" he grumbled, shaking his head. "She ought ter be able ter break out easily enough what with the lessons she's been getting' on picking locks, Pat'll tell anyone who'll listen long enough."

"Aye, an' 'e's startin' to work on computers now too. 'E's hacked into some bank's mainframe already an' set off the alarms to summon the police there jus' ter see if he could."

"Dartford Bank?"

"I believe so, why?"

"It was on the news this morning that they'd had a breach in their security systems. That little bastard's turnin' into a right techie."

"Yeah. I'm thinkin' about havin' 'im help me out on me next project. 'E claims if 'e had the right equipment he could probably wire security cameras to direct back to any television display 'e sets up, I'll have to test 'im on that."

"Startin' the poor kid off early," Don said, still looking down the bar for the bartender. "Where the bloody hell did that bastard jus' _go_? Ah, the hell with this… fuckin' disappearin' son of a bitch…" He turned around and got off of his barstool, managing to stand with but a little swaying – for as much as he drank, it was a wonder his alcohol tolerance really hadn't improved much since his first experience with tequila – and he flinched at the memory of that night. None of his experiences with tequila had turned out pleasant at the end so far, but it wasn't the end that was supposed to be the best part of it. According to everyone he had spoken to about it, he was lucky he hadn't woken up in a jail cell or attempted to ride an electronic floor buffer and failed miserably yet. He was still wondering about that last one, in fact – half blitzed, the idea sounded sort of fun. He walked around to the end of the counter once he was sure of his balance – it helped that they were sitting right at the end – and lifted the panel of the bar that led to the back, retrieved a bottle off of the back shelf, and headed back out to his barstool. "Bastard can't get his arse down here, it's on _him_ when they come up three bottles short…"

"Yeh bloody thievin' shitehawk."

Don gave a snort of laughter, wrenching open his bottle. "Like you can talk."

Thunder shattered the sound barrier outside about a half an hour and three more stolen bottles of Guinness later (not to mention a couple rounds of tequila, of course), and Al was grateful for this. He used it as an excuse to get the already rather drunk Don out of the bar before he became too bad off to walk back to the apartment complex down the street. As another celebratory self-gift on his eighteenth birthday, Don had started renting his own flat in the same building as the one he had stayed in with Al. The living accommodations had lasted only a few months in all, and Al was again alone in his own little flat.

Of course, the amount of visitors he generally got on a daily basis made up for that.

It was with quite a bit of stumbling that Don made it to his floor in the apartment complex and found his flat after a few tries at the wrong doors (his neighbors really despised him by this point, as he had done the same thing quite a few times before). After a few tries with the key, he realized it was already unlocked (and he could have _sworn_ he had locked it…) and opened the door. He shut it behind him, making sure to lock it this time, headed over to his makeshift, rummage sale sofa, and fell onto it.

_That_ was when he realized he wasn't alone.

"The bloody hell – what in the –?" He jumped up and turned on the lamp on the end table beside him, and looked at the now visible figure that had been but a silhouette in the dark seated upon the other sofa. "Oi, Pat!" He pointed at the fourteen-year-old in question. "Breakin' inter people's flats, 'gainst the law, innit?" He sniggered. "Feel lucky yeh foun' the place, I swear it moved again, took me bloody ages ter figure out where it got to. Mrs. Hapfield nearly called the cops on me fer breakin' inter _her_ fla', fancy that, I swear it was mine before I left fer Mac's." Then something occurred to him quite suddenly. "Wait, wha're yeh doin' 'ere anywho? Yeh look like shite, I tell yeh, yeh're soakin' wet an' all tha'."

"So're you, yeh walked 'ere through the same storm I did."

Don looked down at himself and pulled at his own wet t-shirt. "Ah'll be damned…" he muttered. He looked back up. "Aye, don't be changin' the subjec', yeh little shite, what're yeh doin' breakin' inter me flat a' this hour?"

"Er… I…" He gulped, obviously nervous, looking down at his feet. "I.. sor' of… need somewhere ter stay…" he said slowly.

Don rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner. "Yer gran finally get tired of yeh breakin' out an' finally decided not ter let yeh back in?" he guessed.

"No…" He half-glanced up, but kept his eyes downcast otherwise. "She… sh-she… well, she's in the hospital now, or… was last I was there…"

"What?" Don said, eyes widening. "'S it serious?" He already knew the answer in the back of his mind. Nothing good _ever_ happened when he decided to drink tequila – if nothing bad happened to him, at least, it was bound to happen somewhere else in the world.

"A bit, yeah." He scratched the back of his head, still evading any exact details. After a moment of silence, however, he apparently decided to go on. "They were sayin' there – the doctors an' the nurses and the rest of them there – they were sayin' she 'ad a stroke, I think it was… an' they got her there all righ', and they thought they might be able ter help 'er, but…" He sighed and finally looked up. "I was outside the room listenin' when she… they called it straight-linin', I 'eard the one say somethin' about it, an' – me only other relatives are in Canada, an' they won't search for me at all or anythin' since most of 'em don't even know I exist or nothin', I jus' don't want ter go there. Can I stay here? I can get me own place 's soon as I can pass of fer eighteen, I'll jus' need a fake ID, right?"

Apparently, the tequila had rerouted itself from his head, taking away his dizzy lightheadedness with it. It was headed down to his stomach to fill it to the bursting point now, to bring on an annoying bout of nausea he wouldn't have suffered until morning otherwise. At least this helped his mind comprehend what was going on a little bit faster. Pat's parents had died when he was too young to remember them at all, apparently. His grandfather and grandmother had taken him in, and his grandfather had died. Now his grandmother had as well, leaving him with no relatives but second and third cousins over in other countries that had never heard his name before.

"I…" He shook his head. "I hate it for yeh, mate…. O'course yeh can stay," Don said quietly. "It's a two bedroom flat, yeah?" Not that Pat was going to sleep – now that the tequila wasn't clouding his vision over, it was easy enough to see that the kid was in a state of shock, wide awake, eyes somewhere between incomprehension and terror.

Even as Pat – still looking horrorstruck – nodded, mumbled a quick thanks, and headed off for the other room, Don was resolving to stay away from the tequila for a while. It had to be the most disastrous drink he had ever encountered in his life.

* * *

It had been but a nineteen or so minute walk out of that little hellhole he had landed in a year ago to get to Ennis – he had recognized it at once, having been there before when he was quite a bit younger. It was a nice market town, fairly large – much larger than his previous hometown had been, at least. He didn't need to be in a small town. He needed the excitement of a city, or at least a large town with a population of just barely over twenty thousand, to drive his memory away from a year ago. Ennis was a good place for it.

Even standing on the side of a bridge in the town, looking down at the serene river it ran across, the background noise kept Sean's mind from wandering too badly. Here, he always had to worry about being mugged or lynched or pick-pocketed, anything of the sort, because the bustling city wasn't quite as peaceful as the town he had last called his home was. Castleclare had been just north of it, where his drunken, truck-driving friend had dropped him off. Sean had met him once again in a pub here in Ennis – apparently he was a local – and promptly informed him that the gun had never even been loaded. He then found a different pub to claim, as he wasn't here to make acquaintances, especially not with weirdoes like _that_ bloke. Not a chance.

His mind was drawn back to a year ago now, however, as contrary to other times he stood by watching the water roll under the bridge beneath him. The notebook he had picked up about an hour ago was just too curious not to make it wander back. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it, save for the instructions inside the front cover claiming that it could kill anyone whose name was written in it. It was a tempting thought, but not one to be acted upon until he knew what was going on. Had he found it lying on the ground, just in a simple state as though someone had left it there, he might have tossed it into the River Fergus – it was right beneath his feet; it would have been easy enough to do. However, it had instead fallen from the sky as he was walking along, hit him on the head, and landed in front of him, right side up. And he had raised an eyebrow at the notebook as though it had thrown itself at him. Two words on the front of it had distracted him, however, and he had picked it up to see what it could have been.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the notebook except for the manner in which he had found it. It didn't feel like there was any kind of power coursing through its pages – it didn't glow red or emit sparks when thumbed through like a regular notebook. It didn't seem sinister enough to be what it claimed to be, a _death note_, of all things. He would have played it off as a sick idea for a joke if it hadn't fallen out of nothingness.

But it seemed like a possibility now, a possibility that made revenge within his grasp. Dreams or no dreams, nightmares or not, he was _sure_ of who he had watched shoot his mother – not once, but six times, _six times_ – and he needed to be taught a lesson. Roaming the streets freely as though nothing could ever harm him… and he had looked up to the bastard, to all the recklessness, even tried to deny himself the truth for so long that he wasn't even sure what the truth _was_ anymore, but he knew now. It haunted his dreams every night. It didn't matter how physically far away from Newmarket-on-Fergus he was, because part of him was still left in that alley. He wasn't sure what part, but he was afraid to go back and find out, afraid that maybe it was his mortality and he would go back to find that his time with that particular piece of him had run out, that it was his turn to face death as a smoking barrel.

He had to do something. Afraid to return to his own home – and whose fault but _his_? Killing him wouldn't be enough, killing his friends wouldn't even be enough. He deserved everything he had given Sean – he needed to live in fear, in fear that death could be waiting for him around the next corner. With this notebook – if it was all that it claimed to be – it could be accomplished, and no one would be any wiser about it. No one would ever guess that his hand was the hand behind it all, behind the murders, the pen.

Flipping through the pages again, Sean gave a quiet laugh, heard by no passersby – this truly gave a new meaning to that saying about the pen being mightier than the sword.

If any of it was true, of course. He refused to be ignorant enough to believe it wasn't without a bit of trial and error.

He turned his back on the river to watch the people walking past him, waiting – waiting for _anything_, at least a whisper of a possible name of _one_ of them. He just needed confirmation, that was all. Enough lives were lost every day, one more couldn't hurt the flow of the world. What was the chance the notebook would even work, anyway?

The perfect opportunity presented itself to him but a minute later, when a mother walked past with her teenage son, scolding him for something, using his full name in her outrage. He was younger than Sean himself was – could he have been older than thirteen? He flinched down at the notebook slightly. Even if it didn't work, then what would it make _him_? He would have tried it on someone not even old enough to drive legally, to buy liquor, to do much of anything. But this – this had to be divine providence of some kind – some force wanted him to try it. They wouldn't have presented him with this notebook, miraculously fallen from the sky, nor would they have presented him with a name and a face the moment he wished for one, if this wasn't some sort of act of fate.

And he wouldn't get very far if he didn't try it on _someone_….

Watching from a distance, someone – something, rather – gave a cackle of amusing. It was heard by no one, by no humans passing the curious creature that rather resembled a gothic jester, as he and another, better concealed creature stood back and watched this slightly eccentric, slightly maddened teenager open the notebook and place the tip of a pen against its first blank page.

"_Man, this kid's nuts. You sure know how to pick them."_ The winged creature laughed again.

"_I'm not doing this just for entertainment, Ryuk, it's sort of an experiment. I don't expect you to understand it."_

"_Hey, be nice, I helped you out with this. I gave you that old death note I'd filled up to show the King so you could get a new one, didn't I? You should be grateful. Man, I'm gonna have to try this the next time __**I**__ get bored, this is awesome,"_ he said, with a few more sniggers as another teenager with blonde hair clutched at his chest, then fell to the ground. The woman with him – his mother, obviously – screamed, distracting quite a few passersby. The one with the death note was staring back and forth between the notebook and the kid with an odd mixture of horror and wonder in his eyes. _"Are ya gonna tell the kid what it is?"_

"_As soon as you get off my back,"_ Zerhogie grumbled, obviously irritated by his companion. _"Don't forget you __**have**__ to go back soon – your time in the human world's almost up right now."_

Ryuk sighed. _"Man, you're not any fun… I think I'm gonna go find some apples before I head back. See ya."_

And with that, Ryuk swooped off, either to find the nearest fruit stand or the nearest apple tree.

About a block over, Sean sat down against the side of a building in a back alley, staring at the death note, not sure whether or not to be scared, amazed, shocked, or utterly appalled. That kid – a _thirteen-year-old_ kid – had just died of a heart attack in the middle of the street. Whether it had been forty seconds since he had written the name down or not didn't really matter – it had been close enough. All that mattered was that he had watched a child die of a heart attack after – no, not after, but _because_ he had written his name in a notebook. It was… strangely gratifying. He hadn't enjoyed the test at all, but the results were in, and their meaning was quite clear; revenge would be _so_ easy to accomplish.


	5. Letter

_Replies to comments:_

_Sparanda: Well, that's sorta what I was going for  
Sybil Corvax: Ah, they'll never learn it. That's the way the world works. Then again, it probably would be easier to get away with if a death note was involved :P  
Crimson: Thanks :) Ah, my lack of character insight is exactly what's been giving me issues with King's Note lately - I didn't plan out the entire story or the characters' histories until a while after I had started, and therefore some of my plans don't match up with earlier chapters. I'm going to end up having to rewrite the whole thing and it kinda ticks me off. _

_Speaking of which:_

_**I'm going on hiatus with King's Note until this story is finished. Then, I will be rewriting King's Note.  
**I'm sorry to my reviewers, but I am literally incapable of continuing it at this point. I've tried writing the next chapter about twenty times, and my storyline for **King's Note** is interfering with the complete lack of storyline for **King's Note** as it is now. I need to rewrite it to give more information on the OCs - Al's role in the story really didn't do him justice, as I didn't think much about him until after I had killed him off. I didn't bother much with Pat and Don until later on, as I never really planned to make them important until later on. It just really needs to be revised, and if I end up losing loads of fans in the process, then I'm sorry.  
At this point, if I don't start it over, then it's just going to end up unfinished and abandoned. I don't want to abandon it now that I know where I screwed up and how to fix it. I want to fix it and rework it. It's going to be the same story - just with improved writing for the first chapters, bigger roles for my OCs and more information about them, ect. I'm not a different person, so it'll still be the same. It'll still be humorous, Katherine'll still be a smart ass, and the general storyline will still be the same. I just got facts confused now that I've got the story completely planned out in my mind, and I need to fix them. _

_Again, I'm sorry. I feel like crap about it since the story's almost finished, but I can't finish it until I fix it._

_Here's a new chapter of this story to cheer you up.  
_

* * *

Grumbling about getting too bloody old to stay at that damned pub until closing every other night, Al opened the refrigerator in his apartment. It was around eleven in the morning and he had just managed to tear himself away from the bathroom, leaving a rather brutal hangover closed behind its doors. The headache hadn't left, however, and he needed something to calm down the pounding in his ears. It was past the point where aspirin could help. With a yawn, he grabbed a bottle of beer off of the second shelf. A piece of paper slid out of the fridge with it and landed on the floor.

Brow furrowed, Al took a step back from the refrigerator – he had never been one to refrigerate paper in the past, so this was a bit odd – and picked up the page. He unfolded it as he headed over to the sofa and sat down, reading what was written upon the strange, out of place note.

_I figured I should leave this where you would be the most inclined to find it. __I know what you did. Don't think you won't pay for it. I'm not going to get angry with you over it, but I will definitely get even. Very soon, a woman will be attacked and killed by a rabid wolf, just north of Newmarket-on-Fergus in Castleclare. At the house the death will occur, there will be a message leading you to where I will be. If you take too long to find me, I will move on again. I doubt the message will be displayed on the news, so you will need to find it yourself.  
Whether you wish to or not, you will follow me. At the moment, only the lives of strangers are in danger. However, if you don't take my instructions seriously, there will be other consequences. I'll start with Pat, then Don, then Katherine. The death will occur within a week of your receiving of this letter, and you will act immediately. It's not as if you don't have the money to fund the trip; people like you – like __us__, more accurately – are never lacking in that department. Use credit card and check scams, scam others out of money as you go along if it becomes necessary, but you will follow me. I have something I wish to speak with you about. I can't come to you, so you will come to me. As I said, I'll get even; you'll get what you deserve. When you will is up to how fast you can catch up with me.  
Good luck and best wishes, old friend._

Al reread the words a few more times, waiting for some sort of meaning to sink in. The third time around, just as he was wrenching the cap off of his beer, it did. It still didn't make much sense, but it was easy to understand what it meant – _someone_ was seeking revenge… but getting even for _what_ exactly? It wasn't that it mattered – they were obviously serious about it, threatening murder, and he needed to do _something_…. There was no telling if they were entirely serious or not, but he really wasn't willing to take that chance.

"'Old friend…'" he read to himself under his breath. "That's odd…" He skimmed it over one more time, and the clouds of early morning weariness cleared suddenly (though it seemed only to intensify his headache). "Oh, shit…"

* * *

Don responded to the knock on the door of his apartment by throwing an empty bottle in its general direction. It was early (_… wasn't it?_) and getting up would mean that he would have to face the alcohol that was not-so-patiently waiting to have a replay on him. He was satisfied when he didn't hear another knock on the door for a moment, and laid his head back down on the arm of the sofa, exactly where he had landed the previous night upon arriving back at the apartment.

Then the knock came again.

"Too bloody _early_!" he yelled in the direction of the door. "Feck off!"

"It's after eleven, yeh lazy bastard! Unlock the damn door before I kick it in!"

"It is _not_ after eleven!"

"How d'yeh know? I bet yeh haven't glanced at a clock since yeh passed out on yer sofa las' night."

"How'd yeh know that?"

"'Coz it's what yeh always do, isn' it? Look, yeh've got ten seconds ter get to the damned door before I –"

"All _right_ already!"

Don sat up on the couch and stood, then made his way over to the door, careful not to trip over anything – including his own feet – and unlocked it. He swung it open and glared at Al, who was already holding a beer in one hand. That meant he had most likely been up for a little while, and had decided to go wake up the rest of the bloody world. All right, it probably wasn't exactly like that, but what did the reasoning matter? The unorthodox awakening was bad enough.

"Wha' d'yeh want?" Don half-growled. His involuntary yawn a moment later didn't do much to make him seem any more threatening, as Al gave a snort of laughter.

"Get yerself a cup a' coffee or somethin', I'm not about ter have yeh in a bad mood fer this."

"Fer _what_?" Al held up a piece of paper folded into fourths. Don raised an eyebrow and started to grab it, but Al held it back.

"I told yeh. Trus' me, yeh don't want ter read this until yer a little more awake." Still eying the paper suspiciously, Don backed away from the door to allow Al inside, and then shut it behind him, not bothering to lock it – it was fine unlocked, as long as he was present and awake to deal with intruders of any kind.

After a couple cups of coffee on Don's part, he was slightly more awake, still with a murderous migraine, and still eyeing that piece of paper suspiciously that Al wasn't talking about. Finally, around five minutes after Don had rather pointedly set the empty coffee cup on the table, he decided if questioning wasn't going to work, then demanding would have to.

"All righ', now, either yeh tell me what's on tha' piece of paper or I'll be tossin' yeh out the window over there."

"No yeh won't," Al said with a laugh, but Don didn't argue, as he handed over the paper. "Oi, where's Pat, by the way?"

Don looked up from the paper he had just unfolded. "Well, considerin' that was his firs' time consumin' _quite_ tha' much alcohol, he's been in the bathroom since we got back 'ere last night," he said with a laugh, and then went back to the paper. "I think 'e ended up sleepin' in there."

He was indeed glad he had a bit of caffeine in him by the time he finished reading; even awake, he had to read over it again. His hands were shaking as he attempted not to tear the letter to shreds by the second time he had read through it. He recognized the handwriting well enough. If not for that handwriting, he wouldn't have believed it. Despite his outward optimism, he had always assumed after that fifty-some-odd hour long search that his brother was dead.

Now, he thought it might have been better if Sean _wasn't_ still alive.

"That little… the _hell_, what's 'e out ter get revenge on yeh at _all_ for?" Don asked incredulously, looking up at Al. "_You're_ the one what got that bastard thrown in prison, 'e should be – wait, yer not plannin' to go chasin' 'im down, are yeh?" Al was silent. "Yeh are!"

"What d'yeh expect? I'm not about to sit back an' let the three of yeh get killed, am I? I'll be moved out by the end o' the week –"

"Yer actually givin' up yer flat? Yeh should catch up ter 'im righ' away just as long as yeh get to Castleclare…"

Al shook his head, his expression grave. "I have a feelin' he doesn' have any plans ter get caught fer a while. I suppose it's… it's good to know 'e survived an' all tha', but actually seein' the… seein' what happened, it did _something_ to him. I might be able ter talk him into seein' some reason when I find him."

"He'll be lucky if he doesn' get caught by the police firs' if he's planning on going out an' murderin' people," Don said, setting the paper down on the table and shooting a glare at it as he did. "The little feckhead, what the bloody hell's _wrong_ with 'im?"

"If everythin' he said in the letter's true, he's not goin' to get caught. I don't see how it's possible. 'E said the woman in Castleclare was goin' to be killed by a rabid wolf, didn' 'e?"

"I don't fuckin' know! I don' give a damn, either, I don' care if 'e's goin' out shootin' people or if 'e's beheadin' 'em or – I don't bloody care, 'e's gone _mad_!" He sat back against his sofa and looked up at the ceiling, his hands clenched into fists. "Bring 'im back here when yeh find 'im. I don' care if yeh manage to talk any sense into the little bastard or not. I'm goin' to bloody kill him regardless."

"I'm not –"

Don interrupted him before he could finish. "Are yeh tellin' Pat and Katherine or are yeh just leavin' in a week without letting them know?"

"I'll let you decide how much to tell Pat, and when to. I'll be tellin' Katherine right before I leave, just not why or for how long."

"That's nice of yeh, isn't it?" Don said sarcastically, looking back down with raised eyebrows.

"It's better that way. If I tell her too much, she'll talk me into stayin', and that'd put all three of yeh in danger. I'll not be havin' that, not until I know whether or not he's bluffin' about all of this. There's always a chance he could be, I'm just not willin' to take tha' chance until I know for sure."

Don shook his head. "Yer mad for this, yeh know."

Al laughed. "I'm probably mad for a lot more'n _this_."

* * *

The two room shack wasn't the most glorious accommodation, but it offered the concealment needed for an aspiring serial murderer. It was concealed in thick forestry with no road leading to it – it could only be found by someone given directions to it. It had once belonged to an old hermit, but Sean had stumbled upon it while looking for somewhere to stay in this particular town. Now the hermit was dead of a heart attack and he had a nice little hut in the middle of a forest that would be untraceable.

Technically, there would be no way for anyone to trace any of this back to Sean anyway, which was exactly what he wanted. He couldn't be caught doing this. The isolated shack only offered peace of mind. With the notebook, he _wouldn't_ be caught doing this – all he would need to do to dispose of the evidence would be to burn it, and a notebook would be no sort of evidence, anyway. He could simply say that he was keeping records on the killings out of interest. It would be farfetched, but a notebook would hardly prove anything.

It had been a year or so since he had first picked it up, so now there was a shinigami following him. It had found him a short time after he picked it up, and he had a feeling that it was using him as part of some strange experiment with all of the questions that he asked, but he didn't care. At least with a shinigami around, he wouldn't go mad from living as a hermit until this was all said and done. As long as he had some sort of company, he could retain his sanity.

That was to say if he _was_ sane, he could retain his sanity. He wasn't sure either way anymore. That didn't matter, anyway.

"_So, any idea for patterns between victims?"_

"No, they might be able to link it back to me if there are any patterns."

"_Then why'd you decide to be so careful about the first victim?"_

"I wanted to find someone he'd recognize. That should make him more likely to follow me yet. Of course, he wouldn't suspect that I know who she is – he'll think that it's just a coincidence, but subconsciously, it'll just make him want to find me more. He doesn't want to right now, but this will make him keener on it."

He was still looking between the two pictures and the closed death note. His life span really wasn't an issue to him, so he could now see clearly the name of one of the people depicted in the pictures, the one he needed most at this moment. Sarah McConnell was her name, and her story wasn't a particularly nice one. She had spent many of her sixteen years of life as a drug addict, and had gotten pregnant. She had managed to stay off of drugs for the eight months she was pregnant, and the baby was born premature, one month early, on October 4, 1986. She was still sixteen then, and saw no way for her to be able to take care of the child. She was back on drugs no more than a day after the birth of her daughter, who she left on the doorstep of an apartment building in Newmarket-on-Fergus where the father lived, only to be taken by ten-year-old Mark Alfred Mitchell – better known now as Alvin McManerberry – to the local orphanage. Sarah had since cleaned up, and was trying to find her lost daughter. It was too bad her search was about to come to a rather unconventional end.

When they _had_ managed to badger the story out of him, Al had mentioned seeing the woman, and there was no doubt he would remember her. These days, her daughter looked so like her that they could have been twins, separated by years rather than minutes or hours.

One of the pictures he had depicted Sarah as she was now. The other was her daughter. That picture was rather odd. Despite having the eyes of a shinigami, Sean couldn't see her name, only her lifespan. That could have only meant that the orphanage she was at truly was as horrid as she had always made it out to be. That had never filled out any legal papers on her, and she therefore had never been given a legal name. Having been abandoned a day after her birth by a mother who cared more about cocaine than her own daughter, her mother had obviously never given her a name. She must have been born outside of a hospital.

It would probably be better this way for the poor woman. Sean doubted Sarah McConnell would want to know that her long lost daughter was aspiring to become a criminal. No matter how Al might try to deny it, that's exactly what she was aspiring to be. She could break out of the orphanage as good as a professional could break in, and she had a quality about her that made people trust her, one that she didn't seem to be close to growing out of. Al had that same quality, and it had taken him to the top. He was probably both the most respected and the most feared con artist in the country, and it might have gone even further than that. He was good at covering his tracks, but he was still proud enough of his work that he would leave little hints behind that it was indeed him.

Now Sean had his identity, one of the best kept secrets in the criminal world. There was nary a soul in the underground that didn't at least recognize the name Alvin McManerberry, but also not one that knew who he really was, and very few who could put a face to the name. With his new eyes, Sean knew who he was and knew his history. His parents had died in a passenger train crash when he was five years old – something that Al never spoke of to anyone – and he had lived with a foster family for around four years before running away. Shortly after that was when the world lost track of him.

"_It's still weird that that one doesn't have a name,"_ Zerhogie said from behind Sean's seat at his splintering wooden table. _"I'd think I would have seen something like that before with as long as I've been around. So, when's all this going to happen?"_

Sean flipped open the death note and pointed at the first page that wasn't instructions on how to use it. Written there was a short passage.

_Sarah McConnell  
__Animal attack  
On December 21, 1999, at her home at midnight, she will write a note that reads as follows:_  
"_So you were too late to find me this time. That's a pity for you – I'm already long gone.__  
You might find me again where the Burren meets the Bay; where the yellow cliff will rise underfoot.  
__I'll be waiting, but not patiently. Move quickly if you wish to end this now."  
Five minutes after completing this note and leaving it upon her dining room table, she will open a window in her living room. She will then let a wolf waiting at her back door inside of her house, which will brutally attack and kill her. She will die at exactly 12:10 a.m. on December 21, 1999, and the wolf will then escape through the open window and off into the night._

The plan was foolproof. While the police might suspect that a person is behind the attacks after a few notes – if not after the first one – they would never be able to truly trace random animal attacks across the country back to Sean himself. That was impossible. Even if they did begin to suspect someone, it wouldn't be him. He was careful about whether or not anyone could see him, careful enough that no one but Al and whoever he chose to tell would know that he was even still alive.

"_I thought you didn't want anyone to suspect you,"_ Zerhogie said slowly after reading the passage.

"They won't," Sean said. "Humans don't find death notes often enough for this to make any sense to them. The police'll be runnin' around in circles. Even if they call in professionals, they won't be able to find any real evidence against me, will they?"

"_What about the death note?"_

"It's only a notebook. If worse comes to worst, I'll just forfeit it or burn it or somethin', then I won't even remember doin' anythin'. It'll be like the one behind it all just vanished into thin air."

He stuck the pictures inside the notebook and closed it, then stood from the table. He opened the bottommost drawer build into the counter beside the kitchenette sink and slid the death note underneath its contents. He then turned around to look at the shinigami. A strange sight he was indeed. Zerhogie was tall, but was hunched over – even hunched over, however, he was still taller than six feet. He had thick-looking skin like gnarled roots of a redwood tree. One of his arms from the elbow down had been replaced with a black metal tube with a hook at the end where his hand would have otherwise been. He wore furs that looked like Indian attire – he was indeed wearing a feathered Indian headdress. His mouth hung in an open state with sharp teeth lining his upper and lower jaws. He had no eyes on his face, or the top of the headdress covered them, but this was no matter – the large eye at the center of his abdomen no doubt made up for this. He looked frail, but still ominous, and he was definitely rather inquisitive in nature – he never stopped asking question, it seemed.

Despite his single clawed hand and sharp teeth, Sean saw no reason to fear him. Even though he carried his own death note, he was no threat. Zerhogie was quite interested in what was going on, and he had dropped the death note for Sean in particular for a reason. It seemed to be an experiment, but it didn't matter regardless. As long as Zerhogie had no intention of killing him, it wasn't a bother.

* * *

_As always, reviews are much appreciated._


	6. Puzzle

_*is growing slightly spastic because this is finally getting into the storyline*_

_I'm not going to be able to stop writing it now. As a warning._

_I'm also working on an alternate one that isn't a Death Note fic, like I was originally going to do. That one will have to be posted on a just-plain-fiction site like Writerscafe. It's fun so far, anyway._

_**Reply (Singular this time - I guess that's what I get for upping my ratings...)  
**ThreeBooksInTheFire: Ah, but the name was already preset in the Death Note manga. I thought it was amusing too, though, which was a lot of the reason I used Zerhogie.  
_

_Onto the story._

_This chapter takes place right at the scene of the first murder with a bit from Zerhogie (and his unfortunate near death experience (not as bad as it sounds, just shinigami laziness at its best)) and Sean (who are both somewhere that we don't know) at the end, with Sean reveling over his plans without revealing much about them in the process because psycho people are just that sly._

* * *

It was pure luck that both porch lights were on at midnight. The streetlamp placed at the other side of the street that passed in front of the front yard – everywhere else remained surrounded by greenery, forestry – lit only the road, just barely touching the front of the house with a dim yellow light. From where he was, off in the woods to the south of the house, everything was visible with those lights on. The side yard was a bit dim, but it wasn't important. It had certainly been bright enough at five after midnight to see the woman living at this house let in the animal perched upon her back doorstep as though it was a common household pet. Besides, the open window was on the front of the house.

Whatever this was, it couldn't have been controllable, not by any normal person. That thought was all that ran through his mind as the screams rang through the night and off into the forest. Growls and snarling just barely pierced through them, but they did, just enough to matter. After this, he couldn't go back.

He wouldn't be _able_ to go back. Thinking of what he was certain he would see once inside the house, he was certain of that.

The instructions in the last letter told him to enter the house after the wolf jumped out the window – and surely enough it did, at eight minutes after midnight. He started toward the house at this signal, but then froze immediately when he saw the beast running towards where he was hidden so carefully at the edge of the forest. The next thing he saw was a flash of gray with a muzzle and mane dyed scarlet. He cringed slightly, glancing over his shoulder to see if it would stop behind him at any distance to stalk after him into the house.

No, that wasn't how Sean was going to do things. He obviously had something else in mind. Otherwise, the wolf would be killing him at that moment.

He headed for the house quickly. The back door – the letter said to use the back door, not the front. He paused as he reached for the handle, for more than one reason. One reason led right back to that outraged, betrayed, utterly hurt voice, yelling at him that he had absolutely no sense for this, that murderers were mad and none could be fixed no matter how well he thought he might know the person. He had been rather sparse on the details when explaining, but it was necessary.

Another reason was instinct, the sort of instinct that one could only come by from working in his field – it had been the first thought to cross his overactive mind upon reaching for the doorknob. He had no gloves, and he would definitely leave fingerprints. Along with that thought led to the one that someone would have heard the screams and called the cops, so he would have very little time to get in, find Sean or the hint that he had left of his whereabouts, and get out. Regardless, though, his fingerprints would be there, and they were on register. There was no doubt it would be led back to him. He would have to be far more careful next time – it could be made out to look like a coincidence then. He had no business with this woman, whoever she was, nor did she with him, and no connections could be made between the two. He was fine, as long as he would be more careful next time… not that he liked the idea that _this_ would have to happen again, but that wasn't the point.

The next reason for his sudden pause was a noise from within the house itself. His footfalls upon the wooden steps hadn't been silent, and he thought he had heard a noise from within the house from underneath them. He was nearly certain he had, and the noise had been _human_. After that screaming and the look of that animal as it had run past him (from what he could distinguish of the blurred shape), how was it possible that she could be alive? He stayed where he was for a moment, waiting.

He heard it again. A whimper of pain. Now his hand was frozen where it hung over the handle. Unable to move, unable to take any other action, he waited. He looked at his watch, more for something to distract him than anything. It was nine minutes after midnight, and thirty two seconds. If the sound continued for more than two – no, one minute, he would go in and help her, then get what he needed, then leave as quickly as possible. If it stopped, he would go in and get what he needed, then leave as quickly as possible. He had his instructions and going against them meant… no, thinking about that wouldn't help. He had his instructions and he needed to follow them if he wanted this to be over with as quickly as possible.

Nine minutes and forty-seven seconds after. He would wait – what else could he do? His muscles had frozen.

Nine minutes and fifty seconds. To any onlooker, the scene might have been comical. He stood there, hand about an inch from the doorknob, his other arm held up and bent at the elbow as he stared at his watch.

Ten minutes after exactly. He looked like a living statue – living, but stationary. Aside from perhaps his breathing.

Ten and five seconds. No, he wasn't doing that either. That wasn't good.

Ten after midnight with eleven added seconds now. He started breathing again when he realized he had apparently stopped in order to listen inside the house more clearly. He hadn't heard another sound for nearly fifteen seconds. She was… no, _it_ was done. It was better to think of things in an objective manner if he had any intention of coming out of this sane. He knew what he would probably see behind the door, but to focus on it with any sort of apprehension would most certainly not help the situation.

He finally unfroze when he heard the sirens off in the distance.

The door would be unlocked; the letter had said it would. His hand finally came to the doorknob and attempted to turn it. It complied without hesitation.

He swung the door open and entered the kitchen first and foremost, where the back door led into. It was a small kitchen with a bar separating it from the dining room. The floor was linoleum in a pattern that imitated tile, and the walls were off-white with cabinets and counters lining them, a random array of appliances placed upon them. A coffee maker, a microwave oven, a stove, a refrigerator, a toaster. He tried to ignore the crimson trail that stretched across it and led into the dining room by focusing on any other detail he possibly could.

The sirens were growing louder.

He hurried out of the kitchen and into the connecting dining room. An elegant wooden table with four chairs around it was its centerpiece, and upon that table was a sheet of paper, sitting at the spot by a the only chair pulled out from the table. He hurried to it when he saw the piece of paper and started to reach for it – then stopped. If he touched it, it would be more fingerprints, and the police were on their way now. He stopped over the table and looked down at the paper that the letter had instructed him not to remove from its rightful place and read the few words upon it.

_So you were too late to find me this time. That's a pity for you – I'm already long gone._

_You might find me again where the Burren meets the Bay; where the yellow cliff may rise underfoot._

_I'll be waiting, but not patiently. Move quickly if you wish to end this now._

"Too late…" Al said under his breath, shaking his head. He read over it a few time and memorized the second line. He would need to write that down. That was the only way he would find Sean. He shook his head, frustrated – he knew Sean had never intended to be caught here….

Something caught his eye, and he stopped shaking his head to stare off into the door that hung open, leading into the living room from what it looked like.

There was a hand there, lying limp in the doorway. From that angle, it was all he could see.

The sirens were closer now. If he kept inching toward the door, curiosity would kill quite a bit more than cats. Those officers wouldn't reason with him once they figured out who he was. Most in the country would give anything to arrest him. He was being utterly idiotic. There was no way he would make it out of this if he stayed here much longer.

He stopped in the doorway and looked down before he could will himself not to. This was where that trail led to, to right _here_. He knew immediately that looking down had been his mistake in this. It damned all objectiveness he might have had, banished it from his mind. He just _had_ to know.

She had been reaching for the door, and it looked as though she had drug herself across the living room from by the window. One of her legs was angled oddly, and the jeans she was wearing were wet with blood, torn on both sides. A single white tooth hung off of a thread, but it wasn't human. It had obviously been the wolf's, proving that no human had done this to her. With the sight of her, there should have been no question of that anyway.

She was lying on her front, and it was quite obvious that her arm was draped across her stomach for a reason. However, when the last life in her was whisked away, the limpness of her arm had done little for that purpose. The wolf had torn her open, and she had been holding herself together with that arm. The attempt was in vain now. It wasn't a wonder she had died quickly. Even if he had come in when he heard her, attempting to save her would have been a pointless effort.

He looked away as the nausea and dizziness began to sink in. He had no way to hold himself up without leaving fingerprints.

And the sirens were growing ever closer.

He took one last look down now and saw her face. It wasn't scratched a bit. From the looks of her arms – on one, the scratches and bite marks were so bad that bone was visible in a few spots – she had covered her head and face the best she could. Her hair was red, but with all the blood, it might have been any other color. Her eyes were wide and staring, transfixed in a look of horror and pain, staring straight ahead with a glazed look of death he had seen one too many times in his life. But there was a difference here.

He recognized these eyes.

Had it not been for the eyes, she would have been unrecognizable. The gaunt figure that had placed a child on a doorstep of a rundown apartment building thirteen years ago, and this woman who looked like a normal, everyday person – they were the same. Her eyes were still sunken, making her look older than she probably was, and her facial features, while less sallow and skeletal now, were the same.

And the eyes belonged to that same day old child she had left on the doorstep.

The dizziness was overpowering the nausea as the sirens soon became accompanied by faint red and blue lights. He looked out the window quickly, but to no avail, since their curtains were closed. They weren't here yet, but they would be soon. If he was going to escape, it had to be now, and it had to be out the back door.

He hurried away from the woman and across the kitchen floor – which turned out to be a mistake. He slid across the trail of blood across the floor and caught himself on the refrigerator with his hands – more fingerprints. He swore under his breath at this and hurried off to the left, out the back door, and down the stairs. He slowed down a short ways into the woods and turned around to watch those flashing lights move closer, closer, and then stop. It was only a time difference of about a minute and a half, two at the most. He was lucky. That's all it was, just dumb luck.

"Burren…" he muttered under his breath, kneeling down on the floor of the small forest. "Where the Burren meets the Bay. Yellow cliffs under… underground or underfoot? Ah, bloody hell, doesn't fuckin' matter, the little shite's gone off 'is rocker…"

He shook the dizziness from his head, hoping it would get rid of the random array of thoughts that were continuously floating back and forth between the back and front of his mind. It didn't do any good, but the dizziness dissipated after a moment of this and he managed to pull himself back up with the help of one of the trees on either side of him. He stood still for a moment to make sure his head wouldn't start spinning, and took off at a quick gait. He had to make it back to the truck he had been using before the police started scanning the area.

It wasn't his truck – he actually had no vehicle – but as far as he was concerned, if people wanted to keep their cars, then they really shouldn't leave the doors unlocked and keys in the ignitions. That was auto theft waiting to happen – perhaps it would teach them a lesson in the future.

At any rate, he was through the forest and back to the truck parked at the edge of it in a matter of minutes. It was a ten-or-so-year-old Hilux, nothing overly special, but it was strong. He could go on or off road if he needed to, and that was a big advantage. He could get places the police couldn't if they saw any reason to chase him.

For now, he just needed to get out of Castleclare. Ennis seemed to be his best bet. It was close and it was a decent sized town. He needed a remotely crowded area to figure this out at, and he needed to be able to get there quickly. Ennis was definitely his best bet at the moment.

* * *

Lying on a couch with a remote pointed at the television "he" had just purchased a day ago with a credit card, Sean waited listlessly for the results of his first true test for the death note. He was sure it would work, so it wasn't too exciting of a matter to him. Zerhogie had watched the entire episode happen and reported back to Sean – the shinigami apparently found the whole ordeal pretty fascinating.

"_I just can't believe what humans will do for revenge,"_ he had told Sean before flying off to add a few years to his own life – apparently he hadn't used his own note in a while and just realized he was running low. _"I'm just glad it's not like that in our world. There wouldn't be any of us left after a while."_

"Can you kill a shinigami with a death note?"

"_Nope. There's other ways. Most of 'em are illegal like here in the human world, and they'll generally get the shinigami who did the killing killed himself."_

"Huh."

And with that, the shinigami had flown off. He was on another prowl this morning, looking to build up quite a bit of the life he had lost without making things seem suspicious in the human world. Sean was patiently awaiting a news report on the nineteen inch television screen sitting atop its makeshift stand – which was really only the coffee table in front of the couch.

At seven o'clock, he got it.

One of those, "We interrupt your regular morning news for this special bulletin," things – that was slightly entertaining. Sean sat up on the small sofa and watched the screen for the bulletin. This had to be it, didn't it?

"Ah, definitely, 'Animal Attack in Castleclare,'" he read the caption at the bottom of the screen aloud. "Brilliant."

He had gotten over the idea of killing long ago, long since the first name he ever wrote upon the death note. It was necessary, and now things would be entertaining to top it all off.

"A cryptic message was found at the scene, making police believe that this attack may have been more than just a mere coincidence," a reporter was saying from off-screen as a camera panned the outside of the victim's house. There was police tape around the perimeter, and people gathered outside the tape as a few officers stationed outside kept them under control. "The brief note apparently addresses police officers, reading as follows:

"'So you were too late to find me this time. That's a pity for you – I'm already long gone.' The note continues to taunt the police with a hint of the whereabouts of its apparently writer. Evidence points to the writer having been the victim of the attack, however. The police have yet to give a statement on their opinion of the case."

Sean rolled his eyes, lying back down on the couch. Of course those pigs would think the letter was addressing them. He would have to wait for the real names to get into this in order to expect and decent results. There was Erald Coil. Danuve. L. All of those bigshots who could have all the police in the world on their side with a snap of their fingers. No results would be had until one of them got involved, and Sean was sure at least one of them would. If any, it would be L, and he was apparently the best of them. He went for odd cases – only ones that interested him, apparently. That's what it seemed like. Erald Coil and Danuve were more run of the mill, easier to get a hold of. You couldn't contact L unless he spoke to you first. That was how he worked, and it was slick – there were millions of criminals who would gladly take his head and stick it on a pole in their front lawn as a trophy. He was a hindrance to criminals.

Not to Sean, though, not right now. Now, if he got involved in the case, the puzzle would fall together in a most orderly manner. He wouldn't have to hammer down any rebellious pieces, wouldn't have to go on a search for any lost ones, because the key piece would be right there. If he had set all of this up correctly, then he was quite certain it would all work out as he wished it to.


	7. Irrational

_Ah, fun on this chapter._

_I got to use car lingo and such. Granted a good bit of it is car lingo commonly used in Britain, but I blame Top Gear for that. Besides, this takes place in Ireland and a lot of their slang (though not all) is the same, so I suppose that's a help to me. Yay! Top Gear has some other use than just to make me more obsessive over cars!  
_

_Also a bit more general criminal activity than there has been in the past few chapters hence my extremely long disclaimer below. This was quite a fun one to write for me, even if it did take me this long.  
_

**_Replies:_**_  
ThreeBooksInTheFire: Too late, she's dead XP I kill people in my stories way too often...  
_

_Sybil Corvax: Aye, thanks. And I like it more every time I work on another chapter :P _

_**Disclaimers:** Death Note? Don't own it. I also don't own Chevy, Ferrari, or Fiat (who are in charge of Ferrari). I don't own shit. Honest. Except my OCs. They be mine. Also, I am not resposable for anyone attempting to hotwire any cars after reading this. I have never before stolen a car, I'm only just learning how to drive. Any references to such things in this chapter were come upon by research. Any signs that the author of this fic may be a petrol head would probably point to truth. Also also, the author of this fic does not break laws and is again working soley based on research for any unlawful things in this here fic. I do not like cops, but that doesn't mean that I will deliberately disobey them. Any unlawful conduct by my readers is not my fault. I hope.  
_

_**Warnings:** Ooooh, swearing and alcohol and carjacking and hotwiring and premeditation of carjacking and instructions on hotwiring and attempted vehicular manslaughter of a police officer and all kinds of illegal goodies. Seriously._

_**Quick-Sum, anyone?:** All right, we set off in a motel room shortly after Al has figured out the meaning of that message in the last chapter. The police come a knockin' and he gets the hell out through a window and runs. The choice is made between Ferrari and old Chevy, and the more irrational is taken and nearly gets our criminal protagonist caught at the border - town limit, rather. A more irrational choice yet is made, but this one turns out good. Then we cut to our beloved psychopathic homicidal antagonist with a bit more insight into his relationship with his Shinigami. Who is this we that I keep referring to? Me and my other personalities, of course! I do honestly refer to myself as we quite often. Dunno why. Tis strange.  
_

_

* * *

  
_

"They know I was there. I went bloody thick and didn't end up wearing any gloves and opened the door like that."

"At least yer not a suspect, yeah?"

"Yet. Left fingerprints on the doorknob and the fridge."

"The fridge?"

"I tripped on me way out and caught myself on it."

"Ah, real smooth."

"Shut the fuck up…"

"An' yer where now?"

"Ennis, a' the moment, but I'll be off to Ballyvaughan sometime soon."

"Where?"

"Little town up by Galway Bay."

"'S it here it Clare?"

"Yeah. The hint that little bastard left was that he'd be by the Burren and the bay and some shite about a yellow cliff. The yellow cliff's Aillwee Cave, since the words its name apparently derived from were _'Aill __Bhuí__.'_"

"… And?"

"It means 'yellow cliff.'"

"Ah. I'm guessing Ballyvaughn is by the Aillwee, then."

"Closest town to it. I 'ad to spend half the day in a library lookin' all this shite up, an' I doubt it's over yet."

_Knock, knock, knock._

Al sat straight up on the bed in his motel room and stared at the door, dropping the papers he had earlier printed out from one of the computers at the library. He had dropped the phone as well, onto the floor, Don still on the other line. It didn't matter, as time had frozen with the knock on the door. That knock was familiar. Not only was it familiar, but also slightly ominous. Three sharp knocks, barely a pause between each one. He picked up the motel phone from the floor and spoke into it.

"Apparently I _am_ a suspect," he said quietly. "And apparently I've been found."

"Wha' –?"

"Gotta go. Need to escape."

He hung up the phone quickly and gathered up the papers. Thankfully, he _had _planned ahead this time. Carrying around a backpack made him feel like an idiot, but sometimes these things were necessary, and it certainly was better than walking down the road carrying a bent out of shape clothes hanger and a cordless drill with a gun, a screwdriver, and a pair of latex gloves sticking out of his pocket. _That _would probably look slightly suspicious. No, no slightly; _that_ had "car thief" written all over it, no matter what way you looked at it. Normally blatant stealing wasn't his style, not at all, but again – sometimes these things were necessary. If they had tracked him, then it was by the truck. Someone had reported their vehicle missing shortly after that attack, and they had found _his_ fingerprints at the scene.

That one little mistake was going to turn into a huge problem for him fast.

He had also thought ahead in getting a room at a motel. He had searched for hours to find one with a vacant room that had a window that led into a back alley. First or second floor didn't matter, as he could climb if at all necessary. However, he had been lucky enough to find one on the first floor.

"Open up!" Three more knocks. "This is the police!"

He bit his tongue to hold back a barrage of smart ass comments that would have only gotten him into more trouble. If he spoke, they would have all that more against him. They would have confirmation that he was here right now, and that he was looking to get away from them for reasons that he couldn't state. He grabbed his bag from under the side of the bed closest to the window and commenced stuffing the papers inside of it haphazardly – now was not the best time to think about organization – on his way over to the window. He lifted it; there was no point in worrying about fingerprints here, as they already knew he was there, or at least had been at some recent point in time. He just needed to get out before they had physical evidence that he was there at that moment – the physical evidence being his being there when they decided to kick the door in.

He managed to find good footing on the ledge of the window once outside, and took the short jump down to the ground. First floors were good. The second floor might have gotten him caught with as little notice as he had to this – he thought for _sure_ it would be announced on the news if he was a suspect.

Pondering over it was no good. Right now, running was the best idea. Running and turning as many corners as he possibly could, but never turning right twice in a row or left twice in a row, as that would put him closer to the main road. He would have to go back to the main road at some time, but not until later. An hour, maybe two hours would probably do it. Then he could find a decent vehicle – preferably a fast one this time in case it did turn out to be necessary – and get out.

He had slowed to a quick walking pace after a good half hour of running, and then had stopped to rest for a short moment in the middle of an alley after another thirty minutes to decide which way the main road probably was. Walking in one direction would definitely take him there, but the shortest route would be best.

He sat down against a brick wall and stared at the brick wall across from it, shaking his head. Lost in the middle of nowhere. Great. At least he had managed not to touch anything else while running. The less fingerprints, the better. If this running thing lasted much longer, he might burn his fingerprints _off_ just for convenience. Water and lye would do the trick. It would burn like hell, but that was the entire point. He might need to burn them off, so it was bound to burn in some form. Lye was just convenient, could be bought at local stores and no one would really question it.

Regardless of that, he had gloves at the moment, so fingerprints didn't matter. His prints couldn't be found on any stolen cars, at least, if he had gloves for the time being. No need to burn off any fingerprints yet.

Al sighed and shook his head, looking down at his hands. "I'll end up mad before any of this over… already bloody talkin' to meself…. Dammit, I've got to car and get out of here."

He put his hands on the ground (subconsciously cursing himself for leaving fingerprints there) and pushed himself up to stand. When he began moving this time, it was at a fairly normal pace. There were no cops to worry about; he had almost definitely outrun them. Now all he had to do was walk straight and hope they weren't lining all of the exits out of the alleys onto the main road. If they were, that could be a problem. It seemed highly unlikely, though, so there was really nothing to worry about. It was dark now. All he needed to do was find a car that probably wouldn't have an alarm, could be easily broken into, could be easily hotwired, and could go fast enough to outrun the police if necessary.

After the half hour it took him to find the main road, he found the very type of car he was looking for parked in a motel parking lot. American-made, obviously, just by the steering wheel, but that wouldn't matter. It was old, a bit rusted but otherwise in decent shape. It had manual locks, so that would be simple enough. And because it was old, hotwiring would be no problem. It was parked at a motel, so it probably belonged to tourists or someone visiting relatives from a ways away. They probably wouldn't be to happy when they woke up to discover their transportation was gone, but he would abandon it the next town over. Granted the key switch would be broken when it was found again, but they could get it replaced. At least they would get their car back in the end.

Not that they would want it back. It _was_ a decent car. A late sixties or early seventies Chevy. They just didn't bother taking care of it. The chances that it would go as fast as it was supposed to were slim, but regardless, it would still go fast enough.

If he could have ignored the fact that car alarms would be a huge issue, then he would have definitely taken the refurbished Ferrari Daytona parked next to the rust bucket he was about to break into. Of course, the bright red paint job on it would have done very little for subtleness, but it was a Ferrari, so it wasn't as though that mattered. The police would see him, but they would never catch him.

He rolled his eyes and slung his bag off of the shoulder it had been hanging on, and then sat on the ground between the two cars, better concealing himself from any passersby in the night. He would have to try the Ferrari. Someone might have been idiotic not to put alarms on it. And if they had, he would run. Quickly. He wouldn't leave any fingerprints with the gloves on, so it was fine.

He pulled the latex gloves out of a side pocket on the bag and, putting them on, felt more like he was about to perform heart surgery than steal a car. Or attempt to steal one. He never had done anything before that required latex gloves.

Aside from pose as a medical student once, but that was the only time, and _that_ was more of a sensible situation to wear latex gloves in than to steal a car. Again, it was a Ferrari. It would be going too fast for anyone to get fingerprints off of it.

To hell with being inconspicuous. It was idiotic, it was completely pointless since he would almost definitely have to get rid of it very soon, but defying all possible logic, he reached for the handle on the driver side door and pulled on it.

The door came open without a complaint. No alarm went off. Al laughed to himself; not even _locked_. Someone was stupid and about to learn a hard lesson for it. He almost laughed out loud at this, but that would have entirely negated the fact that there was no alarm. It would have drawn attention to him. The car itself would draw enough attention to him without any outside assistance.

After drilling the key switch to its breaking point – he had done this enough times in the past that it usually only took a couple minutes – Al dropped the drill back into his bag and took out the flathead screwdriver. With all the pins within the ignition fallen into place, the screwdriver would work exactly as a key would. The only downside was anyone with a flathead screwdriver could now start the car.

Even so, he highly doubted many people carried flathead screwdrivers on them at all times.

He was forced to pull out of the parking lot quite quickly when the engine roared into life. The twelve cylinders beneath the hood weren't in the least bit quiet and had probably just woken up everyone in the motel, so a quick getaway was completely necessary. In a car like that one, it was also completely possible.

All the way down the road, travelling as fast as the car could take him as soon as he was out of Ennis (and around eighty before he had left), his more reasonable side (which had apparently decided to leave him before he got to the parking lot and catch up with him here) was grumbling at the less reasonable in severe annoyance for taking the most obvious car he possibly could.

The less reasonable side was even agreeing now.

"Bloody thing… if they 'ad just fecking put a bloody alarm system in it… this is bad, _dammit_, dumping it as soon as I get into another town – bloody hell, one seventy-five, that's quick – I could keep it, the cops wouldn't ever catch up with me – No! Bloody hell, should've jus' taken the damned Chevy, least it was more ambiguous… slower, but not like that bloody matters, they could spot this damn thing from miles away…. Jaysus, I've turned into a bloody _mental_… Wha' – oh, shit, yeh've gotta be kiddin' me…"

Sirens.

Red lights.

Blue lights.

All in the wing mirror, the rearview mirror, flashing into the car and across the dashboard – it was everywhere. It was only one car… and it seemed to be merely the city police. He was out of Ennis, just not yet out of city limits. As soon as he passed a sign indicating his leaving, this he would no longer be within the jurisdiction of this lone officer. He could call in the county by then, but he would make it. He would have to. If he didn't make it, then neither would _them._ Al flinched at the thought and reflexively attempted to further burry the gas pedal against the floor. It was no use, as he was going at its top speed already, but it couldn't be helped.

He glanced in the driver side mirror again. The officer was right on his tail, and a plan was formulating. It was absolutely reckless, absolutely ridiculous. It was likely to end badly, but also likely to end extremely well. It was merely one officer from a speed trap, one that didn't know who was behind the wheel of this Ferrari. There would have been more lights if he had, more sirens ringing out through the night and waking up every family in every house they passed on this highway.

On a fairly long, straight stretch of road, the end of the chase was in sight, easily accessible, but the one behind him would call in backup as soon as he crossed the town limits. Al adjusted the rear mirror, trying to keep an eye on the road as it rushed past him and the car behind him at the same time. He was reaching to pick something up in his car, it seemed.

The radio. It was now or never, then.

Wondering just how badly he might regret doing so, he slammed on the brakes. The car came to a screeching halt, but not before the police officer realized what he was doing. The Daytona wasn't cheaply made. The entire car was metal, strong metal, as almost all older cars were. The police officer's car was most likely fiberglass or a fiberglass and steel mixture, weaker, as most new cars were. He had been distracted by the radio, the chase, the number of things going on. His expectancy had been that he would have to call in the county for this chase, of course, but it had all ended horribly. As he had looked up from the radio in his hand, he had seen the rapid slowing and heard the screech of the brakes at once, but his reflexes had failed him in his surprise.

The Ferrari remained at a halt as Al examined this all through the rearview mirror. The front of the police car had smashed into the rear of the Daytona and done little more than scratched a bit of paint. It had shattered the rear window, but with an extremely well timed duck, he had avoided all but a few cuts on his forearms, perhaps a sliver or two of glass stuck in. That would be examined later. Worrying about fingerprints was pointless now regardless, as his blood would be on the car. Overall, the police officer had gotten the worse end of the deal.

His arm laid upon the dashboard, the radio had slid limply out of his hand after the crash. A rather hard hit to the head on the steering wheel from the impact and inertia, something Al had read about in a sixth or seventh grade science textbook some years ago. It explained why you jumped forward when a car came to a sudden halt. It explained why the police officer was out cold and using his steering wheel as a pillow, blood dripping down it, small splatters of it on the cracked windshield of the police car. That was probably a concussion, and definitely a few stitches.

_Unless he's dead,_ Al though abruptly.

And on that thought, he took off quickly. Had the officer had enough time to get a signal through to the county? There seemed little chance of it. For as slow as the moment had seemed to move, it had been little more than a few milliseconds before Al saw the officer picking up the radio from the dashboard somewhere and the time that he had slammed on the brakes and sent the officer into unconsciousness or death. Hopefully it was only unconsciousness. If he was a suspect in these murders, he didn't need vehicular manslaughter of an officer of the law added to the list of charges if he was caught. Attempted vehicular manslaughter was bad enough.

The guy was probably a rookie. If that was the case, it was his mistake. His reflexes would not be built up nearly as well as they needed to be to go up against a pro.

Al watched in his rearview mirror as the car fell further and further behind him, rapidly as the car accelerated to its top speeds of a little over one seventy. Normally his reflexes were better. Normally, he would have noticed a speed trap, even a well concealed one, from a half a mile off and had the time to slow down before the police officer even saw him. Perhaps the engine had been the giveaway – it was anything but quiet – but Al was certain that wasn't it. He was being careless, extremely careless, and there was no one to blame but him for it. He had been so preoccupied with his idiocy in choosing _this _car that he had performed a further act of idiocy in not paying attention to the roads. He was better at this game than that. One careless move was all it took.

He would definitely have to get rid of this car soon.

* * *

"– _goin' a few over one seventy, it was like someone was trying to get away from the devil himself. I didn't see the driver, so I 'aven't got a clue if it could be that Alvin McManerberry, but it seems likely. I had a speed trap set up down there most of the day when it was determined he was in town, and apparently my radio wasn't workin' quite righ', so I didn' hear any of the transmission to watch out for anyone leavin' town. I'd have called it in sooner if I had."_

Ah, and he _had_ been waiting for a story like that all morning.

It was with a bowl of Cheerios in one hand and a can of beer in the other, Sean took a seat on his sofa so the television would be more than just background noise. He had been turning it on and off all morning with the remote from various parts of the front room as he rambled around with not much to do but wait. It hadn't been until he had decided to grab some sort of breakfast that he had turned on the television to hear this. It would have been simpler to just turn it on and leave it on, but the background noise bothered him, especially when it was pointless and about other things.

Officer Perry Higgins had apparently been very lucky to survive his crash going at one hundred and seventy-one miles per hour. The car he had been chasing was described as a nineteen sixty-nine to nineteen seventy-one Ferrari Daytona, painted bright red and in absolutely perfect condition. How Al had managed to make such a mistake was absolutely beyond Sean, but there was no doubt that it _was_ Al. Irrationality had probably taken over at a very inopportune moment and led to further irrationality in not spotting that officer.

The crash had been fast. The Ferrari driver had slammed on the brakes. The last thing Higgins had seen was the steering wheel coming straight for his forehead as the laws of inertia proved themselves to be as potent as ever. He had been found with the front nose of his car caved in with smoke pouring out from under the bonnet, the car rendered useless, and there had been fragments of red paint all over what was left of the front bumper. That meant there would be fragments of white paint all over the back bumper of an old restored Ferrari somewhere.

The Ferrari would probably be ditched on the side of the road by the time that police found it unless Al decided to prove his recklessness again. Perhaps he thought that taking a car that utterly conspicuous would make the cops think it couldn't possible be him because someone of his standing in the criminal world would be intelligent enough to _never_ take a car that conspicuous. If that was his train of thought, he was obviously mistaken. Cops were idiots; they wouldn't think that far ahead. They acted upon reflexes and planned as they went along.

"_How long are you gonna keep this up?"_

"Back already?" Sean looked over his shoulder at the fur-laden Shinigami, who was in his regular slouching stance behind the couch and viewing the television set. "It's only been a few hours."

"_I don't really need to kill anyone, I'm just bored and there's no one around to gamble with,"_ Zerhogie said with a certain note of irritation in his voice. He didn't like being questioned, but Sean didn't really care. The Shinigami was interested in what was going on and wasn't going to kill him. _"Now really, how long are you planning on keeping this going?"_ He didn't like being questioned because he was the one who liked doing the questioning. That was all that it was.

"I don't know," Sean said, looking back at the television and op. "Until it gets borin'. I don't think it'll be fer a while."

"_Why not?"_

Sean gave a snort of laughter. "D'yeh really miss gamblin' an' sleepin' all the time tha' much?"

"_Why not?"_ Zerhogie repeated, sounding impatient again.

"I'm not entirely ready to go through with the last part of me plan yet, if it means so much to yeh to know," said Sean, rolling his eyes as he opened the can of beer. "Yeh really are a bloody pest."

"_You say that now,"_ the Shinigami said, _"but you've already said you'd probably go insane without company. Me, I personally think you're probably already there."_

"Could be."

* * *

_And on that bombshell, I'm off to continue reading **The Drawing of the Three** by Stephen King. Dark Tower series. Absolutely brilliant. I recomend it to anyone who likes reading in the least bit._

_Oh, and **GO TAKE THE POLL ON MY PROFILE. **The fummins one, yes. The results are more important than anyone could ever possibly comprehend and I need statistics!_

_Not really. I just wanna see what wins. Because it shall be amusing :D  
_


	8. Paranoid

_So, this came out to about my usual length, but since it's more paragraphs than dialogue, it probably looks shorter and will seem longer. It's 3,333 words exactly according to Microsoft Word, so eh._

_Anywho.  
_

_**Replies:**  
ThreeBooksInTheFire: Well, that's part of it. But it's hardly going to end at just one person._

_Sybil Corvax: Thanks muchly :)  
_

**_Disclaimers:_**_ All the same as for the last story, and to add to that, I also don't own Toyota or Lamborghini. I also do not suggest that you try the lye-and-water trick, and that's for your own safety. Wanna know why? Watch Fight Club. That'll give you a visual aide of what would happen._

_**Warnings:** Let's just say that there's a lot._

_**Quick-Quote?: **  
Then again, he still felt as though __someone was watching him. Not just cameras. It felt like there was someone else there in the room with him.  
Sean was doing one hell of a job of driving him mad, if that's what he was going for._

* * *

Well, he _had_ ditched the Ferrari. Unfortunately by that point in time, an emotional attachment to the car had already been formed and Al drove the Hilux he had found parked near the entrance of a long driveway back to get the Ferrari again. It had only been a couple of miles, so it hadn't been found by any police yet. All he had done to the truck was hotwired it; it had been locked when he came upon it, but a window was broken, rendering the lock useless. He wasn't entirely sure why anyone had even bothered. It didn't matter now, of course. He had once again ditched the Ferrari a few towns before Ballyvaughan, and this time had managed to stop himself from going back to get it. He had switched cars enough times on the way between towns that hopefully the police would lose track of which one he was using at the current time. From the news report he was watching on a small television in his newest motel room, it seemed that they most definitely had.

They still thought he was in the white Lamborghini (another choice based solely on stupidity and recklessness that he really needed to get a hold of before it got him in huge trouble). He had ditched that car in between the last two towns. By the time they figured out what vehicle he was using this time, he would be long gone and in another car. He would have Sean's next clue by then, and he would be off and out of the county to figure it out. The moment he left the county, he would be considered a national threat, but he would have to manage. Sean was bound to leave County Clare eventually, anyway.

Al jumped at the sound of _something_ and turned his head. It had been like this since he woke up this morning. The feeling of being watched – it kept getting worse, alone here in the motel room, with every passing moment. He had looked it over for bugs and cameras and had found nothing, but the suspicion wouldn't go away. After looking over and seeing that an expensive-looking vase – one that had probably actually come from a pound shop – had fallen off of one of the nightstands, the feeling grew stronger yet. Nevertheless, he reassured himself that a breeze had simply come in through the window (which he had opened this time around in case any quick getaways were necessary) and knocked it over.

Rather, he would have reassured himself of that if there wasn't a sheet of paper lying upon the nightstand in the place of the vase.

With the newsreader on the television still babbling about what car to look out for as an alerter to call the police on Alvin McManerberry, he sat up on the bed and reached for the paper, grabbed it, and read the words written in a familiar scroll upon the sheet.

_I see you've found Ballyvaughan. And I congratulate you. Now  
all you need to do is find one Brendan Cavanagh. No worries, I'll  
tell you where he is. I won't tell you where I am. You took too  
long and now you definitely won't find me this time. Tough luck,  
mate._

_I suppose you're probably wondering how I managed to get this  
letter into your motel room, or even how I knew where you were  
to begin with if I'm already too far away for you to find me. That's  
something that I most definitely will not be answering just yet. You  
will know, but not until you find me. I'll tell you exactly what's  
going on then, if you can manage it. Personally, I think you can.  
It will take you a bit of time, but I know what you're capable of as  
well as anyone else in this business. The police also do. Plenty of  
pictures of you on file and suddenly they can't find __any__ of them. I'm  
wondering when you pulled that off. Then again, you probably did  
that every time you were caught along the way, just in case. You  
people. I'm not giving you ideas here; no one you know would be any  
more likely to find me than you would be. Besides, I doubt any old  
friends would be willing to help you anymore, especially not any in  
high places that __might__ have the recourses to find me. No one wants to  
be linked to a suspected murderer._

_Now, I suppose you need a location. Mr. Cavanagh actually lives quite  
near Aillwee Cave. You'll find that easily enough, it's the most popular  
attraction near Ballyvaughan. Located on the R480 is the Ballyallaban,  
the remains of an old Earth fort. Going southbound on the R480, you  
come across a road that takes you to the Aillwee Cave just before the  
Ballyallaban Ring Fort. Just before that road is the one that Mr.  
Cavanaugh lives on. You will turn onto that road, and the first house  
you see on the left will be his._

_Mr. Cavanagh is a wealthy man and his home shows this. It is the first  
house on the road, the very first, and you will see it immediately. I would  
suggest driving a short distance past it, leaving your vehicle, and then  
walking there._

_You have until midnight, as he will be killed then. Mr. Cavanagh lives quite  
a ways away from any other people, and you should therefore have a bit  
more time to escape than usual. Regardless, I do suggest that you use  
your time wisely. You never know when someone could show up and find  
you there. There is already enough evidence against you._

_I do hope we can meet soon. I'm just dying to tell someone how I am  
accomplishing all of this. You should find it quite interesting.  
I wish you all the luck. I would rather you didn't get caught before you  
find me, so I assure you that wish is quite sincere._

_And a bit of advice for your sake; stay away from the supercars. They're  
__fast, but they're easily recognizable. Again, I don't want you getting caught  
before I have a chance to talk to you, so please try not to. I'm sure I could  
handle it if you did, but it would still be a tad bit annoying._

_Once again, best of luck to you. Perhaps you'll find me next time._

He had been gaping at the letter, at the absolute lack of sense that it made for it to be there, until that last line. At that, he had scowled and shoved it into his bag, which had been lying next to where he was sitting upon the bed. It was still inexplicable how the letter had gotten there, how the vase had fallen over behind him. His guard had been on since the incident with the speed trap, and it had been sharper than ever. It had given him a fair bit of paranoia to have it on and tuned to such a high level, but it was necessary. By all means, he should have noticed if someone had entered his motel room, put a letter on an end table, knocked over a vase, and left.

Then again, he still felt as though _someone_ was watching him. Not just cameras. It felt like there was someone else there in the room with him.

Sean was doing one hell of a job of driving him mad, if that's what he was going for.

He tossed his bag onto the floor and fell back on the bed, hands tucked behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling.

It would be necessary to plan out the night's events. He knew what road it was already from Sean's directions. The R476 had turned onto the R480 on the way out of Ennis. The R480 was fairly short, a regional road stretching from Leamaneh – marked solely by the old ruins of a castle – and up to combine with the N67, a national secondary road, which led straight up to Ballyvaughan. That made the R480 merely fifteen kilometers long in and of itself, give or take one or two either way. It might have been fourteen or sixteen. Then only about two kilometers were travelled on the N67 in order to reach Ballyvaughan. The entire drive from Ennis to Ballyvaughn would have taken less than an hour for anyone driving at the speed limit. Therefore it had taken quite a bit less time for Al. He had arrived at Ballyvaughan just after ten at night, had checked into a hotel called Hyland's Burren – which conveniently had a rather nice bar downstairs – and had stumbled upstairs after around an hour spent at said bar. Because of his tendency to cover his tracks immediately after any mistakes, and also with many thanks to good connections, the police had no available photographs of him. Everyone was going on crumby police artist sketches, and none of them looked anything like him. For now, he was safe to sit in crowded areas and remain unrecognized by most.

But the plans, yes, the plans. It was the morning now, just after ten, so there would be plenty of time to go and investigate exactly where this house would be. The road by Ballyallaban did indeed have another road just after it going northbound, which would be just before it going southbound. That was the road he needed to check. It was no more than five minutes away from the hotel, so it was no big deal. He needed to find the house and find somewhere around it where he could hide out and wait for midnight.

Then he would stop by a local shop, buy a number of useless grocery items to disguise the lye flakes and vinegar he would also purchase that would have quite a bit of use, and he would use the lye to burn off his fingerprints.

Even thinking calmly of the idea, he couldn't help but flinch a little. Lye, when mixed with water or saliva, would burn at over two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Water would boil at around two hundred and twelve degrees, so anything near that was definitely rather hot. Al wasn't looking forward to it in the least bit, but it was going to be necessary. His hands would have to be bandaged for some time, but it was going to be necessary. The police would have evidence that he had been at the scene of the first crime. They wouldn't have evidence that he had been at this one, or any subsequent ones for that matter. If he had no fingerprints, then it would be impossible for him to clumsily leave any behind. If all they had to go by was that he had been at the first scene of the crime, then they had absolutely nothing on him.

There were two types of people in the world who needed to know these sorts of things, these kinds of laws by heart. One type was those who enforced them. The others, those who broke them. Generally those who broke them didn't know. Only those who broke them professionally learned them. If anyone was going to make it through this madness without getting chucked into a prison cell, it would be Al. He had been learning all of this for better than ten years now.

It would be better to get an early start on all of this, so Al went ahead and stepped off of the bed, grabbed his bag from next to it, and headed for the door. He glanced over his shoulder as he reached for the doorknob, trying to figure out where his paranoia was coming from. He shook his head at the place one last time before opening the door, grabbing the keycard from a table beside the door, shutting it behind him, and then locking it before walking off.

He didn't see the Shinigami hover through the door after him, because that wasn't part of the plan Zerhogie had somehow been managed to get talked into taking part in. If he had seen it, he would have known why he felt he was being watched. It was because he _wasn't_ just being watched; he was being tailed.

* * *

The sink in the bathroom of the little motel room was plugged shut and filled with vinegar, and the bathtub's faucet was running across the room. Sitting cross-legged in front of the bathtub was Al, reading the label through a pair of large sunglasses on a canister of lye with obvious apprehension. The sunglasses were necessary - it was hard to find any other slightly protective eyewear on short notice, and it protecting the eyes was quite important that working with lye in the presence of water.

This had to be easier to stand than just holding his hand in fire. It was definitely an easier concept to stomach. With the lid of the can pried off, the white flakes didn't look particularly threatening. Of course he knew as a fact that lye could burn through aluminum cutlery, dissolve wood. It was often used as an agent for unclogging drains, and was definitely a very effective one.

There were plenty of criminals who used it to burn off their fingerprints. Al truly didn't want to spend the rest of this time chasing Sean with hospital gloves on. It just seemed weird. Not to mention, people asked questions when you bought latex gloves. What are those for? Why do you need them? If you bought lye in the store, you were just unclogging a drain. If you bought vinegar, you were just cooking something. If you bought them together it was suspicious, unless you bought them with a random array of other items regular humans might keep stocked in their house. Al had done this. Rather, someone called Larry Halls had done this. Al just happened to have one of his credit cards on hand. He would have to throw it out soon and get a replacement. It was no rush as he had plenty others he could use in the meantime, but Larry's was almost at its limit and he would probably have it shut off soon anyway, suspicious of all of the extra spending on it.

Al had no idea who Larry Halls was, but whoever he was, he probably wouldn't like Al very much when he got his next credit card bill.

From the open doorway of the bathroom, Zerhogie watched interestedly as this human – his name was Mark Alfred Mitchell, but according to Sean, he was the one that the people on the news were calling Alvin McManerberry – ran the fingers of his right hand under the water running from the bathtub's faucet. He had no idea what the human might be doing, but judging by his hesitation, it was doubtful that whatever it was would be any fun. It might be amusing for Zerhogie, sure, but not at all for this Al character. He would have asked if he could have, but that was most certainly not a part of the plan.

He had accepted because he was interested in all of this, accepted the suggestion that he watch Al. So far, he thought as Al stuck the tips of his wetted fingers into the canister of white flakes, it was proving to be quite interesting.

And the charades began when he swore quite loudly and dropped the canister on the floor, jumping up to a standing position and staring down in a mixture of pain and utter horror at his own hand.

The reasoning for the string of swears was quite obvious. Apparently, the flakes had reacted with the water in some way that made them burn. Head tilted to the side, Zerhogie watched in mild interest and amusement. Why would anyone want to do _that_? He thought Sean was crazy, but his doings weren't self destructive. This was absolutely ridiculous, utterly pointless.

"Feckin' – bloody _hell_ just _had_ to go an' drop the entire bleedin' can… _fuck!_" Al doubled over, holding his hand against his chest, careful not to get any of the foaming solution that the lye flakes and water had become on his shirt, lest it should burn through the material and eat a hole through his chest. _This_ was hell enough.

He dropped to his knees and began scooping the flakes of lye up into his good hand, dropping them back into the can, getting as much of it as he could. Then, befuddling Zerhogie even further, Al ran his other hand under the bathtub's tap and stuck his fingers into the canister, wincing before they had even touched the white flakes. His hand shot back out, the flakes sticking to the skin where there had been water. He sat back against the wall this time, staring at his hands as steam poured off of the tips of each of his fingers. The foaming solution was dissipating on his right hand; his left was just getting started.

He managed to stand himself up and walk to the sink, and he then plunged his right hand into the vinegar he had earlier poured into it. He held it there for a moment before pulling it back out to examine it. Everywhere there had been lye, skin had come off. Where the lye had been thicker, a thicker layer of it was gone, leaving the bright red flesh beneath exposed, beginning to bleed already. He flipped his hand over to look at the other side. Aside from the throbbing pain coming from his hands, something there felt different. After a moment of staring, he figured out what it was. His fingernails had been burned through.

A steady stream of swears was still coming from him, though they were mostly under his breath now. Now his eyes were clenched shut so he wouldn't _see_ his left hand, wouldn't see the flesh searing off of the fingers, wouldn't see what it had done to the right hand. This, regardless of the benefits it would give him in all of this, was absolutely _mad_. How anyone could stand it was absolutely inexplicable.

Zerhogie understood quite suddenly what this was.

The police suspected this man because they had found his fingerprints at the first house. Al had then reasoned that burning the skin off of his own fingers would get rid of the fingerprints, and he could therefore go into and out of houses with no suspicion. The police would still suspect him. They seemed stubborn enough. However, what evidence would they have? None at all. For as idiotic as it seemed for him to be doing something so self destructive without any reasoning, the reasoning behind it made it seem much less so. It was brilliant, even. Humans had to worry about these things, so they were bound to come up with ways to bypass them. Shinigami didn't; Zerhogie could have killed Al right then and there and he wouldn't ever know what had hit him.

The guy might have been better off dead with what Sean was planning for him.

Zerhogie was supposed to report back with any important information. This definitely seemed important enough. He spread out a pair of brittle, skeletal wings and flew through the wall, past Al and out of the hotel. Though Al wouldn't realize it until later – he was slightly distracted at that moment by the fact that his skin was burning off – his paranoia also left in that very instant.

After a few more minutes and good bit more swearing, some of it quite loud, the lye was as cleaned off of the bathroom floor as it could be, the sink was drained of vinegar, and the burns were bandaged thoroughly. It wouldn't look suspicious to wear gloves regular gloves at this time of the year, and he planned to do so until his fingernails started to grow back and the burns were mostly healed over. Healed, the skin would be new, a light pink color without a single accusatory line upon them. No fingerprints. That was one less risk in this game to worry about.

* * *

_And on **that** bombshell, methinks I'll go play guitar and pass out on the couch or something and sleep all day tomorrow._

_Though the sleep part probably won't happen. Aghinsomnia. I've got L-worthy eyebags right now from it and it shows no signs of stopping.  
_

_Speaking of L, he'll appear within the next two or three chapters, possibly within the next four. Woot? I think so._

_Oh, and I suggest this to anyone who has a computer. WATCH FIGHT CLUB. You can find it online at **freehitmovies . org** (just remove the spaces). It's brilliance.  
_


End file.
